Burnout: The Mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281

by Stephanie Osborn

  Anders stared down at the little talisman in fascination, turning it over in his hands. It was a simple, stylized biped, with somewhat crude "mitten" hands and booted feet. The body was stocky, and appeared to be wearing a backpack detailed with buttons, or perhaps gauges, of some sort. The head was oversized and spherical; two large eyes and a mouth slit were carved into the stone, but no other facial features appeared. From the top of the round head, two short, thick antennae protruded. In between these a bail had been affixed through which the thick silver chain ran. On the upper left side of the body, a tiny gecko was etched, like the logo on a shirt. Turning the figure over once more, he spotted a long, thick, tapering tail attached to the back of the legs.

  Anders glanced up from his mesmerized study of the artifact, to find the old Indian grinning at him. "Like it, do ya?" the old man asked again.

  "Yeah," Anders answered uncertainly, then blurted, "What is it?"

  "He, he, he," the old man chuckled in a wheezing laugh. "Nobody really knows."

  "Huh?"

  "Well," the old Zuni elaborated, "some ‘a those… whadda they call ‘em? New Agers? You know, them folks that go huntin' f'r the vortexes an' ley lines an' stuff. They say they're alien astronauts," the elder continued. "The original stone carvings and paintings were made by the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones. But nobody really knows what it's s'posed to be."

  "Is it a…"Anders searched his mind for the word Murphy had used, "a fetish?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "What's it… do?"

  "This one? Oh, this one is for protection."

  Anders' eyebrows shot upward. Alien astronauts… protection… why am I not surprised? Hell, even the stone it's carved from looks like a star-filled night sky.

  "You want it, don't you?" the elder continued, prodding gently. "You should get it. It's calling you."

  "What?" Anders stared at the man as if he'd grown a tail himself.

  "If it's too expensive, I'll knock ten percent off," the elder added, wheedling.

  Anders stood almost rigid as an internal debate took place. I'm a bloody scientist. What am I doing? This is nothing but superstition. But can it possibly be a coincidence? Ah, it's just a selection effect. If I hadn't been thinking about similar things, I'd never have noticed it. Still…

  "O… okay. I'll take it," he answered, impulsiveness winning out over skeptical uncertainty. He laid down a beautiful pair of inlaid turquoise and silver earrings, dangling from French hooks, that he had found earlier on a jewelry display. "I want these, too."

  "Ooo. Your lady will love these," the old man grinned again. "They're handmade by a really good Navajo artist." He picked up both the fetish necklace and the turquoise earrings. Holding them cupped in his hands, he began to chant softly in Zuni, in a singsong voice, eyes closed. He raised his hands up to eye level, tilting his face toward the ceiling, then ended the chant and opened his eyes. He removed the small tag from the fetish necklace, then handed it to Anders. "Here. Go ahead and put it on while I ring this stuff up."

  Anders complied, studying his image in a mirror behind the counter while the old Zuni painstakingly rang up the purchase. "Hm," was all he said, noting how the little lapis carving seemed to immediately find a spot inside the collar of his grey polo shirt, just below the hollow of his throat, where it lay, soothing and cool.

  "Oh, that looks good," the Indian noted, looking up. "Don't take it off. That'll be $167.43."

  Pulling out the "special" plastic the government men had given him, Anders handed it to the man, asking, "Don't take it off? Why?"

  "Protection," the old man winked, swiping the card through the reader.

  "Hm," Anders said again, signing the receipt.

  The astronomer took the little box which now contained the earrings, and left.

  Crash was already back in the Cheyenne Mountain when Anders climbed aboard.

  "Got something for Cayleigh?" he asked.

  "Yep," Anders mused.

  "I'll drive awhile," Crash offered. "You get that ready to mail, and do whatever else you need to."

  "Okay." Anders made his way into the back of the RV.

  * * * *

  Another Native store clerk joined the old Zuni man at the storefront window, as he watched the RV leave the parking lot. "You finally sold the ‘spaceman,' Vernon?" the young woman asked, curious.

  "Yup," Vernon answered. "It was calling him. I could feel it."

  "But he isn't even from the States, by the sound of him," the woman protested mildly. "Let alone… Zuni."

  "Don't matter," Vernon replied calmly. "I knew when I made it ten years ago, whoever it called to, was gonna need it. It's going where it needs to be."

  "I heard you singing. You bless it?"

  "Of course. Couldn't you see the grey mist around him? He's going to dark places. He needs all the help he can get."

  The woman shrugged, indifferent. "Whatever." She turned to go back to her counter, then paused. "Vernon?"

  "Yeah?" The elder stared off down the now empty road. In the distance, a sun glint might have marked where the Cheyenne traversed the rust red desert. Or perhaps not.

  "One thing about that fetish I never understood…"

  "What's that?"

  "The little gecko. I mean, I've seen the stone drawings. You reproduced it exactly--except for the little gecko on the chest. That's not in the rock paintings."

  "No, it isn't," the old man replied.

  "So?"

  "So what?"

  "So why the gecko?" The woman was beginning to grow exasperated.

  "Because that's what they wear," Vernon answered, smiling mysteriously.

  * * * *

  Blake turned off the surveillance in his room after rowing up a six-pack of Tooheys on the table, making it obvious that he intended to take some down time and de-stress. Grabbing a can, he flung himself on the bed and popped the lid, knocking it back for a long swig. Reaching for the remote, he turned on the television, searching for something of interest on the satellite feeds that the underground installation received. He ended up, disgusted, on the weather channel.

  "Satellite stations from all over the ruddy world, and I end up watching the weather for bloody freakin' Death Valley," he grumbled, irked.

  Blake knocked back the beer again. As his head tilted, something unusual caught the corner of his eye.

  Down near the floor, in the shadowed corner between the door and the bath, was a small section of wall that appeared to be a different texture from the rest of it. Puzzled, Blake set aside the can of beer, putting it on the bedside table, and stood, moving to the corner. He bent down and studied the area of wall, then knelt and ran his fingers over it.

  "Crikey," he said in surprise. "It's…" Probing fingers found a latch, hidden in the edge of the industrial grey carpet, and Blake flipped it.

  Without a sound, the section of wall opened up, revealing a rather large tunnel, some three feet wide by four high, dimly lit and utilitarian. Blake's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  In moments, he'd crouched down and crawled in, exploring. Only a few feet in, he found a circuit breaker box and some plumbing. A few feet past that, he discovered a junction. The small maintenance tunnel opened out, merging with several similar tunnels, running far off to the left, out of sight.

  "Ooo," Blake murmured, beginning to nose around.

  * * * *

  A few hours later, the pair traded off driving the Cheyenne again. Crash disappeared into the back of the RV, telling Anders he was going to go over the data in more detail, and Anders nodded. The astronomer turned on the CD player and popped in a jazz music CD to keep himself company as he drove.

  Two hours later, as they were passing through a small town, Crash emerged from the back of the RV, sitting down in the passenger seat beside Anders. "Found it," he said with satisfaction.

  "Found what?"

  "The other spacecraft."

  "What?!" Anders exclaimed, almost putting the Cheyenne into oncoming traffic.
>
  "Whoa! Watch it, Mike! Break right!" Crash cried in alarm.

  "Oooo shit! Sorry," Anders apologized, straightening the vehicle before it could hit anything. "Wrong continent. Dammit, don't do that to me, Crash! What have you found, where, and how??"

  "In the downlink data," Crash explained. "Couple of the Earth observation payloads picked up a large object moving across the planetary face at speed, during the chase to recover the tethered satellite."

  Anders mulled this over, then nodded. "Makes sense. They had to adjust their orbit substantially to re-capture NTS, which changed the timing of their orbits."

  "Right," Crash agreed. "And that was something the other ship hadn't counted on, so it got caught in the field of view. Actual, hard evidence of their existence."

  "But why," Anders began, "would your own government be trying to cover it up?"

  "A--we don't know it's the government," Crash said, but Anders cut him off.

  "Only damn organization with this kinda resources."

  "Mmm… maybe you're right. I can think of some others, though. The United Nations, for instance. But B--it's a very legitimate ‘prevent mass panic' move. Because if the general populace knew we were on the brink of interstellar war…" He paused, dropping back into a military way of thinking. "Not to mention, it's probably a case of national, or maybe even planetary, security. That's usually the reason for keeping something like this under wraps; you don't want the other side knowing what you know, how you know it, or what you can do about it."

  "Yeah. Guess so."

  "But there's still one thing that's really bothering me," Crash admitted, frowning.

  "What's that?"

  "They're killing people that find out."

  "Well," Anders shrugged, "you know the old joke: ‘I could tell ya, but then I'd have to kill ya.'"

  "Yeah, but Mike, that's just it--it's a joke," Crash pointed out. "That's not the way it works in real life. If somebody finds out, they either get recruited into the project, or they're made to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Or, if they're really just completely uncooperative, I guess there might be an effort made to discredit ‘em to the public."

  "Make the poor blokes look like raving maniacs, that sort of thing?" Anders suggested.

  "Exactly. They don't just go around killing people. Not like this." Murphy shook his head vehemently. "I mean, there's seven people dead in the Shuttle, seven that aren't the crew, ‘cause the aliens got the crew, and they don't want anybody knowing. Then there's Mitch and Gayle. And they tried to kill me. Sounds like they'd love to get you, too. That's eleven murders or attempted murders that we know of, right there. God only knows who else they're after, just for suspecting something fishy."

  The two men were quiet for a long time as the Cheyenne rolled down the desert highway. Finally Anders broke the silence.

  "So?" he asked, trying to hide his eagerness.

  "So--what?" Crash answered, deep in thought.

  "What's it look like?" Mike followed up.

  "What look like?"

  "THE OTHER DAMN SHIP!!" Anders shouted in frustration.

  "Oh," Crash grinned, "no idea."

  "WHAT? Then how do you know--"

  "Telemetry data, like I said," Crash answered. "I know there's something there, because the instrument flagged it. But I don't have any software to convert the data to an image."

  "Oh." Anders' whole body sagged in disappointment.

  "After Jet's little message, I went looking for it," Crash added, "and hit the jackpot. Of the three sets of data that made it out of Texas with me, two have a signature."

  "Well, at least you have some hard evidence," Anders remarked, trying to shake his frustration. "I mean, you pretty much lost everything else. You know the medical records and flight recorder transcripts are fake, but we can't prove it."

  "Sure we can," Crash disputed. "Well, not the medical records. I guess they burned when… when Gayle… had the wreck…" Crash's choked voice tapered off. His face was drawn with the pain that seemed to crush his chest whenever he thought of the woman he loved.

  Anders glanced at him in sympathy. "Hurts bad, huh?"

  Crash sighed, and looked away. "Yeah. Imagine if you lost Cayleigh…"

  "You loved her that much?"

  A nod was Anders' only answer.

  "Crash?"

  Crash shook his head, remaining silent, face averted. Anders, realizing Murphy couldn't trust himself to speak, nodded in understanding.

  "Keep going, Crash. She'd have given you hell if you quit now."

  "I know." The tone was low and rough.

  "So go on. What can you prove?" Mike encouraged.

  "Well," Crash took a deep breath, finding his voice again, and fighting it back into its normal tone, "like I said, I can't prove the med records were faked. But I can prove the transcripts are bogus."

  "How?"

  "Aside from the fact that, according to the transcript, the Orbiter was remarkably stable after losing the right wing AND the empennage…" a grim Crash pointed out.

  "Ooo, good point," Anders interjected, eyebrows ascending.

  "…Remember what the malfunction was supposed to be?" Murphy continued.

  "Control surfaces locked up, wasn't it?" Anders replied, thinking back. "Flaps and rudder got stuck, basically."

  "Right. Why?"

  "According to the pilot, because the commander hosed ‘em. He said, ‘what'd you do, Jet?' or some such."

  "Yup," Crash said with satisfaction. He pulled the CD from his pocket and popped it into the player, then fiddled with the buttons until he had the audio queued to the spot he wanted. "Now, listen to this."

  * * * *

  CDR: Copy. Houston, Atlantis. Entry switch checklist complete.

  CapCom: Houston copies. Entry switch checklist complete.

  PLT: Beginning control surface prep.

  CDR: Houston, this is Atlantis. RCS dump complete.

  CapCom: Houston copies.

  PLT: ADI shows roll of zero, pitch thirty, yaw zero.

  CDR: Copy. Throttle switch?

  PLT: Auto.

  CDR: Pitch?

  PLT: Auto.

  CDR: Roll?

  PLT: Auto.

  CDR: Yaw?

  PLT: Auto.

  CDR: Body flip?

  PLT: Manual…

  [Nominal 5 minute pause]

  CDR: Body flip switch to Auto. Houston, Atlantis. We're at entry interface.

  * * * *

  "There!" Crash exclaimed, punching off the player. "Right there! Now, who was doing the control surface prep?"

  Anders' jaw dropped. "The pilot."

  "Exactly! NOT Jet! The last part of the CD is scripted, and the script writer screwed up, because he did a rush job before they got their hands on the original, and didn't have it to go by!"

  "Damn," Anders breathed. "So it doesn't matter that you don't have the original…"

  "Right," Crash agreed with a grin. "I can prove it's a fake on any damn dub of this thing they give me."

  * * * *

  "Coming up on Phoenix proper, Crash," Anders called back to his companion as they entered the suburbs of that desert city. "I'm going to need to stop and get petrol. Can you run into the hot stop and grab some stuff while I pump?"

  "Sure, Mike," Crash, who was still studying what data he had, looked up. "Whatcha need?"

  "Mmm," Anders thought hard, "several liters of bottled water, some milk, a loaf of bread, and anything you want."

  "Wilco." Crash grabbed his baseball cap and crammed it on.

  "Here's cash," Anders said, handing a wad of bills to his friend as he turned into a service station. "I'm gonna put the petrol on plastic."

  Crash paused, his hand on the door latch. "Sure they can't trace it?" he verified, worried.

  Anders grinned like a Cheshire cat. "I'm positive," he answered.

  "How?"

  "Tell ya later. Now go."

  * * * *

  After his little discovery, Blake
spent about half his spare time mapping out the maintenance shafts, ascertaining where they went, where the surveillance equipment was placed, and how often they were accessed. The answers seemed to be, in order: apparently everywhere, very little, and only as needed.

  A particularly momentous day was the day he discovered the tunnel leading upward. Blake set a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder that ran the length of the shaft, gazing up, excited, then glanced at his watch. "Oh, shit," he exclaimed, dismayed. "Haig's staff call is in thirty!"

  He mentally logged the location, scurrying back through the tunnels to his room, where he closed the hatch, made himself presentable, then resumed the area surveillance. Walking over to the bed, he casually picked up a nearly empty beer can, turning it up and downing the last swallow. He tossed it in the trash on his way out the door.

  * * * *

  As the President walked the gauntlet in Scottsdale, shaking the hands of his supporters, a tall man in a dark suit and almost opaque sunglasses watched from nearby. An air of power, of intensity, and of danger, exuded from the agent. A soft beep issued from his hip. He extracted a state of the art cell phone from its belt holster and put it to his ear.

  "Watcher One."

  "Watcher One, Hotdog. Divert. Repeat, divert."

  "Copy divert. New locus?"

  "Firebird. Two miles east. Hot stop."

  "Copy Firebird. Two miles east. Wilco."

  The man replaced his cell phone and stepped forward.

  "Mr. President?" he courteously touched the campaigning politician lightly on the shoulder. "There's been a slight change in plans…"

  * * * *

  Another RV sat on the opposite side of the fuel pump. A short, plump, balding man ran the pump. "Hey, there," he addressed Anders. "How's it going? Kinda windy to be drivin' one of these today, ain't it?"

  "Yeah, just a little bit," Anders grinned back. "But I'm used to it. Wind's a pretty common condition around these parts, seems like."

  "True, true," the other driver said. "Ya know, I think I might have met your friend, there," he nodded at the convenience shop. "Name's George Phillips. I ran into him over in Las Cruces, on my way to Roswell. Where ya headed?"

  "Oh, just playing tourist," Anders tossed off. "As you might notice by listening to me, I'm not from around here. Ray, there," he gestured toward the shop, "has been nice enough to show me around a bit."