by Dan Simmons
"Yeah," said Baedecker. "Great." He strapped himself into the left seat as Dave waggled the cyclic control stick and reached down with his left hand to squeeze the starter trigger on the collective pitch control lever. It had been the constant interplay of controls—cyclic, collective, rudder pedals, and throttle thrust grip—that had given Baedecker fits when he had been forced to
fly the perverse machines twenty years earlier. Compared to a military helicopter, the Apollo lunar module had been a simple machine to master.
The gas-turbine engine roared, the high-speed starter motor whined, and the two forty-eight-foot rotor blades began to turn. "Yowzuh!" called Dave over the intercom. Various dials registered their appropriate readings while the whop-whop-whop of the main rotors reached a point of almost physical pressure. Dave pulled up on the collective control and three tons of well-aged machinery lifted off its skids to hover five feet above the tarmac.
"Ready to see my shortcut?" Dave's voice was flat and metallic over the intercom.
"Show me," said Baedecker.
Dave grinned, spoke quickly into his mike, and confidently pitched the ship forward as they began their climb into the east.
San Francisco was rainy and cold for the two days Baedecker and Maggie Brown were there. At Maggie's suggestion, they stayed in a renovated old hotel near Union Square. The halls were dimly lit and smelled of paint, the showers were jerry-rigged onto massive bathtubs with claw feet, and everywhere hung the exposed pipes of the building's sprinkler system. Baedecker and Maggie took turns showering to remove the grime of their forty-eight-hour train trip, lay down to take a nap, made love instead, showered again, and went out into the evening.
"I've never been here before," said Maggie with a wide grin. "It's marvelous!" The streets were busy with rushing theater-goers and couples—mostly male—walking hand in hand under neon signs promising topless and bottomless delights. The wind smelled of the sea and exhaust fumes. The cable-car system was down for repairs, and all of the cabs in sight were either filled or beyond hailing distance. Baedecker and Maggie took a bus to Fisherman's Wharf where they walked without speaking until a cold drizzle and Baedecker's injured ankle forced them into a restaurant.
"The prices are high," said Maggie when the main course had been served, "but the scallops are delicious."
"Yes," said Baedecker.
"All right, Richard," said Maggie and touched his hand. "What's wrong?"
Baedecker shook his head. "Nothing."
Maggie waited.
"I was just wondering how you were going to make up this week's worth of classes," he said and poured more wine for both of them.
"Not true," said Maggie. In the candlelight her green eyes seemed almost turquoise. Her cheeks were sunburned even under their tan. "Tell me."
Baedecker looked at her a long moment. "I've been thinking about when Tom Gavin's son pulled that stupid stunt in the mountains," he said.
Maggie smiled. "You mean dancing naked on a rock during a lightning storm? With a tent pole in one hand? That stupid stunt?"
Baedecker nodded. "He could have been killed."
"This is true," agreed Maggie. "Especially since he seemed intent upon taking the names of all the gods in vain until he pissed off the wrong one." She seemed to notice Baedecker's intensity and her voice changed. "Hey, it turned out all right. Why are you letting it bother you now?"
"It's not what he did that bothers me," said Baedecker. "It's what I did while he was up on that boulder."
"You didn't do anything," said Maggie.
"Exactly," said Baedecker and finished his glass of wine. He poured more. "I did nothing."
"Tommy's father got him down before either one of us could react," said Maggie.
Baedecker nodded. At a nearby table several women laughed loudly at an unheard joke.
"Oh, I see," said Maggie. "We're talking about Scott again."
Baedecker wiped his hands on a red linen napkin. "I'm not sure," he said. "But at least Tom Gavin saw his son doing something stupid and saved him from possible disaster."
"Yes," said Maggie, "and little Tommy was . . . what . . .? seventeen, and Scott will be twenty-three in March."
"Yes, but . . ."
"And little Tommy was ten feet away," said Maggie. "Scott is in Poona. India."
"I know that . . ."
"Besides, who are you to say what Scott's doing there is disaster? You've had your chance, Richard. Scott's a big boy now, and if he wants to spend a few years chanting mantras and giving away his lunch money to some bearded horse's ass with a Jehovah Complex, well, you've had your chance to help him, so what do you say you just get on with your screwed-up life, Richard E. Baedecker." Maggie took a long drink of wine. "Oh, shit, sometimes, Richard, you give me such a . . ." She stopped and began to hiccup violently.
Baedecker gave her his ice water and waited. She sat silently for a second, opened her mouth to speak, and hiccuped again. Both of them laughed. The group of ladies at a nearby table looked over at them disapprovingly.
The next day in Golden Gate Park as they peered out from under their newly purchased umbrella at orange metal columns appearing and disappearing in the low clouds, Maggie said, "You're going to have to work out this thing about Scott before we get on with our own feelings, aren't you, Richard?"
"I'm not sure," said Baedecker. "Let's just let it rest for a few days, all right? We'll talk about it later in the week."
Maggie brushed a raindrop from her nose. "Richard," she said, "I love you." It was the first time she had said that.
In the morning, when Baedecker awoke to bright sunlight sifting through the hotel curtains and to the sound of traffic and pedestrian bustle from the street below, Maggie was gone.
They flew east and then north and then east again, gaining altitude even as the forested land rose under them. When the altimeter read 8,500 feet, Baedecker said, "Don't Air National Guard regs call for oxygen somewhere around here?"
"Yup," said Dave. "In case of sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will fall from the overhead compartments and hit you on the head. Please place them over your snout and breathe normally. If you are traveling with a child or infant on your lap, quickly decide which of you has the right to breathe."
"Thanks," said Baedecker. "Mt. Hood?" They had been approaching the volcanic peak for some time. Now it loomed tall to the left of their flight path, the snow-crested summit still two thousand feet higher than their own altitude. The shadow of the Huey rippled across the carpet of trees below and ahead of them.
"Uh-huh," said Dave, "and that's Timberline Lodge where they did the exterior shots for The Shining."
"Mmmm," said Baedecker.
"Did you see the movie?" asked Dave over the intercom.
"No."
"Read the book?"
"No."
"Ever read any Stephen King?"
"No."
"Jesus," said Dave, "for a literate man, Richard, you're incredibly poorly versed in the classics. You do remember Stanley Kubrick, don't you?"
"How could I forget him?" said Baedecker. "You dragged me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey five times the year it was at the Cinerama theater in Houston." It was not an exaggeration. Muldorff had been obsessed with the movie and had insisted on his crewmates repeatedly seeing it with him. Before their flight, Dave had talked enthusiastically about smuggling an inflatable black monolith along only to "discover it" buried under the lunar surface during one of their EVAs. A shortage of inflatable black monoliths had frustrated that plan so Dave had contented himself with having Mission Control awaken them at the end of each sleep period by playing the opening chords of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Baedecker had thought it mildly amusing the first few times.
"Kubrick's masterpiece," said Dave and banked the Huey to the right. They flew low over a pass where tents and camper-trailers huddled around a small mountain lake, late afternoon sunlight dappling the water, and then the land was falling away from them, the pine forest l
ooked less green to Baedecker, and low brown hills became visible to the south and east. They flew on at a steady five thousand feet as the land changed to irrigated farmland and then to high desert. Dave spoke softly into his microphone to traffic control, joked once with someone at a private airport south of Maupin, and then switched back to the intercom. "See that river?"
"Yeah."
"That's the John Day. Scott's guru bought up a little town to the southwest of there. The same one Rajneesh put in the papers a few years ago."
Baedecker flipped open a navigation map and nodded. He unzipped his goosedown coat, poured coffee from a thermos, and handed Dave his cup.
"Thanks. Want to take the stick for a while?"
"Not especially," said Baedecker.
Dave laughed. "You don't like helicopters, do you, Richard?"
"Not especially."
"I don't know why not," said Dave. "You've flown about everything with wings including VTOLs and STOLs and that damn Navy pogo plane that killed more men than it was worth. What do you have against helicopters?"
"Do you mean other than the fact that they're treacherous, untrustworthy pieces of shit just waiting to slam you into the ground?" said Baedecker. "You mean other than that?"
"Yeah," said Dave and laughed again. "Other than that." They dropped to three thousand feet and then to two. Ahead of them, their sides golden and chocolate in the horizontal light, a small herd of cattle moved sluggishly across a wide expanse of dry grassland.
"Hey," said Dave, "remember that press conference we went to before Apollo 11 to watch Neil, Buzz, and Mike show their stuff?"
"Which one?"
"The one right before the launch."
"Vaguely," said Baedecker.
"Well, Armstrong said something during it that really pissed me off."
"What was that?" asked Baedecker.
"That reporter—what's-his-name, he's dead now—Frank McGee asked Armstrong a question about dreams and Neil said he'd had a recurring dream since he was a boy."
"So?"
"It was the dream where Neil could hover off the ground if he held his breath long enough. Remember that?"
"No."
"Well, I do. Neil said that he'd first had the dream when he was a little kid. He'd hold his breath and then he'd begin to hover, not fly, just hover."
Baedecker finished his coffee and set the Styrofoam cup into a trash bag behind his seat. "Why did that piss you off?" he asked.
Dave looked over at him. His eyes were unreadable behind his sunglasses. "Because it was my dream," he said.
The Huey nosed over and dropped until they were flying only three hundred feet above the rough terrain, well below FAA minimum altitude requirements. Sagebrush and piñon pines flicked by, reasserting a sense of speed to their passage. Baedecker looked down past his feet, through the chin bubble, and watched a lone house flash by. It had been brown and weathered, its tin roof rusted, its barn collapsed, its only access suggested by two drifted ruts stretching off to the horizon. There had been a new, white satellite dish next to the shack.
Baedecker clicked on the intercom. There was no intercom floor switch for the left seat, so he had to reach out and touch the switch on the cyclic each time he wanted to talk. "Tom Gavin told me that you were pretty sick last spring," he said.
Dave glanced to his left and then looked back at the ground rushing past them at one hundred knots. He nodded. "Yeah, I was having some problems. I thought I had the flu—just running a fever with swollen glands in my neck. Instead, my doctor in Washington said I had Hodgkin's disease. I didn't even know what it was until then."
"Serious?"
"They grade the thing on a four-point scale," said Dave. "Level One is take some aspirin and mail in the forty dollars. Level Four is GYSAKYAG."
Baedecker did not have to ask about the abbreviation. During the hundreds of hours they had shared in cramped simulators, there had been too many times when he had heard Dave's suggested response to some newly inserted emergency as GYSAKYAG—grab your socks and kiss your ass good-bye.
"I was a Level Three," said Dave. "Caught fairly early. They got me feeling better with medication and a couple of chemotherapy sessions. Took out my spleen for good measure. Everything looks real good now. If they get it on the first pass, they generally get it for good. I passed my flight physical three weeks ago." He grinned and pointed to a town just visible to the north. "That's Condon. Next stop, Lonerock. Home of America's future Western White House."
They crossed a gravel county road and Dave banked sharply to follow it, dropping to fifty feet. There was no traffic. Short, sagging telephone poles ran along the left side of the road, looking as if they had stood there forever. There were no trees; the barbed wire fences had some sort of metal boilers or discarded water heaters as fence posts.
The Huey passed over the lip of a canyon. One second they were fifty feet above a gravel road, and the next instant they were eight hundred feet above a hidden valley where a stream ran through cottonwood groves, and fields lay pregnant with winter wheat and grass. There was a ghost town in the center of the valley. Here and there a tin roof poked above bare branches or fall foliage and at one place a church steeple was visible. Baedecker noticed a large old school
looking west from high ground above the town. It was only five P.M., but it was obvious that the valley had been in shadow for some time.
Dave kicked the Huey over in a diving turn that had the rotor blades almost perpendicular to the ground for several seconds. They flew low over a main street that appeared to consist of five abandoned buildings and a rusted gas pump. They banked left and passed over a white church, its spire dwarfed by a jagged tooth of a boulder behind and beyond the churchyard.
Baedecker's intercom clicked. "Welcome to Lonerock," said Dave.
Most of the friends and mourners are gone by the time Baedecker returns to Dave and Diane's house in Salem. The snow he had seen near Mt. St. Helens now falls as a light drizzle.
Tucker Wilson greets Baedecker at the door. Before that morning, he had not seen Tucker since the day of the Challenger disaster two years earlier. An Air Force pilot and a backup member of the Apollo team, Tucker had finally commanded a Skylab mission a year before Baedecker had left NASA. Tucker is a short man with a wrestler's build, rubicund face, and only a trace of sandy hair left above the ears. Unlike so many test pilots who tended to speak with southern or neutral accents, Tucker's speech was accented with the flat vowels of New England. "Di's upstairs with Katie and her sister," Tucker says. "Come on in Dave's den for a drink."
Baedecker follows him. The book-lined room with its leather chairs and old rolltop desk is a study rather than a den. Baedecker sinks into a chair and looks around while Tucker pours the Scotch. The shelves hold an eclectic mix of expensive collectors' editions, popular hardbacks, paperbacks, and stacks of journals and papers. On a stretch of clear wall near the window are a dozen or so photographs: Baedecker recognizes himself in one, smiling next to Tom Gavin as Richard Nixon stiffly extends his hand to a grinning Dave.
"Water or ice?" asks Tucker.
"No," says Baedecker. "Neat, please."
Tucker hands Baedecker his glass and sits in the antique swivel chair at the desk. He seems uncomfortable there, picks up a typewritten sheet on the desk, puts it down, and takes a long drink.
"Any problems with the flight this morning?" asks Baedecker. Tucker had flown in the missing man formation.
"Uh-uh," says Tucker. "But there might've been if that overcast had got any lower. We were frying chickens in the barnyard as it was."
Baedecker nods and tastes his Scotch. "Aren't you in line for a ride after the shuttle program resumes?" he asks Tucker.
"Yep. Next November if things get back on track the way they're supposed to. We're carrying a DOD payload so we'll get to skip all that conquering heroes preflight press conference crap."
Baedecker nods. The Scotch is The Glenlivet, unblended, Dave's favorite. "What do you think
, Tucker," he says, "is the thing safe to fly?"
The shorter pilot shrugs. "Two and a half years," he says. "More time to fix things than the hiatus after Gus and Chaffee and White died in Apollo 1. Of course, they gave the SRB fix to Morton Thiokol and they're the ones who certified the O-rings safe in the first place."
Baedecker does not smile. He had seen the strange, incestuous dance between contractors and government agencies and, like most pilots, was not amused. "I hear they'll have the new escape system in place for the first flight."
Now Tucker does laugh. "Yeah, have you seen it, Dick? They've got a long pole stowed in the lower bay, and while the command pilot holds the ship straight and level and subsonic, the crew hitches up and slides out like trout on a line."
"Wouldn't have helped Challenger," says Baedecker.
"It reminds me of the AIDS joke about the heroin junkie who isn't afraid of catching anything when he uses dirty needles because he's wearing a condom," says Tucker. He drinks the last of his Scotch and pours more. "Well, hell," he says, "there are more than seven hundred Criticality One items in the shuttle stack, and my guess is that the goddamn O-rings are the only ones we don't have to worry about."
Baedecker knew that a Criticality One item was a system or component, which had no reliable backup; if that item failed, so did the mission. "You won't be landing at the Cape anymore?" says Baedecker.
Tucker shakes his head. On his first shuttle mission, Wilson had landed Columbia on the long strip at Cape Canaveral only to have a tire blow and two brakes wear to the rim. "They know now that it's too damn risky," he says. "We'll be ferrying from Edwards or White Sands for the foreseeable future." He takes a long drink. "But what the hell," he says and grins, "no guts, no glory."
"What's the thing like to fly?" asks Baedecker. For the first time in days, he is able to think about something other than Dave.