Burnout: The Mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281

by Stephanie Osborn

  Most of the room nodded agreement. Payne subsided, muttering to himself.

  * * * *

  "So that's the answer," Haig summarized in a voice filled with wonder, as the conference room's lights rose. "A demonstrable, proven wormhole."

  Blake nodded affirmation. "In a nutshell."

  "And you are certain of this?" the Japanese official queried, her small frame trembling with suppressed excitement.

  "You saw the data," Blake gestured at the now-blank projection screen. "There is no other adequate explanation, if not Hawking radiation."

  "True, true," the Japanese woman mused. "No other explanation comes to mind that fits the facts. We could not be more certain, short of traveling to it ourselves."

  "Which is what we ought to do," Payne interjected pointedly.

  "So, Steve," Haig addressed Blake, ignoring Payne's comment, "given that there's a wormhole for them to use as a short cut, how much does it shave off their travel time?"

  "Most of it," Blake admitted. "Almost the whole thing."

  "Resulting in?" Payne pressed, leaning forward in his eagerness.

  "My calculations show a one way trip duration of approximately…" Blake consulted his notes, although the number seemed branded on his brain. "Thirty-four point five years."

  "Round trip, some sixty-nine years," Haig mused.

  "Right," Blake agreed. "But they're gonna need some turn-around time."

  "Especially if they're mounting an invasion force," Payne added.

  "Major," Blake gazed in puzzlement at the officer, "I know we've been through this before. But I just don't see the need to automatically assume they're coming back, loaded for bear, as you Yanks say. There's no archaeological evi--"

  "Because," Payne interjected, "the wreckage was ‘loaded for bear,' Doctor."

  "But couldn't that be to protect against meteoroi--"

  "Steve, listen," Haig interrupted, his voice gentle. "I understand what you're saying, believe me. And there is some validity to it," he eyed the major sternly, who gazed back, almost insolent in his confidence. "But you know as well as I do, why that spacecraft really crashed. We have to assume they plan to retaliate, and we have to be ready."

  "I know," Blake offered with a sigh. "But maybe we're running full tilt into something that doesn't have to happen. If we admit our error--"

  "No error," Payne snapped out. "Violation of air space."

  "The misunderstanding, then. You can't possibly claim that the challenge, or the response, was understood."

  "And how can we be sure they will accept such a statement?" the NASA official asked reasonably. "After all, the USSR was shooting them down for years, as early as World War II, according to classified records from the Stalin era. The Earth as a whole has a bad track record in this area, when you think about it. I want to agree with you, Doctor. But that one question must be answered first--how can we be sure?"

  "We can't," Blake agreed, not quite willing to admit defeat. "But it seems to me that it's a damn sight better than stepping into the street and shouting, ‘Draw!'"

  Haig shook his head, raising his hands for silence before the U.S. major, backed by the Russian, Chinese, and Canadian, could return their arguments. "A date, Steve. Give us a date."

  Blake sighed, the scientist in him not really wanting to provide a hard date, far too uncomfortable with the inherent uncertainties. "Not earlier than one year from this October," he managed to force out.

  "A year and a few months," Haig mused, as the others nodded in consideration. "Payne? How does that fit with our preparation timeline?"

  "Acceptable," Payne decreed. "We anticipate having an operational defensive structure in place in eight to ten months. The full-up defensive posture will be ready approximately one month prior to Blake's deadline."

  "Excellent," Haig decided. As Payne shot another disparaging, baiting glance at Blake, opening his mouth to speak, the air marshal abruptly decided he'd had more than enough. "Dismissed," he said, in a tone that brooked no debate.

  The others filed out, leaving Blake alone in the conference room to gather up his materials.

  * * * *

  They had been exploring the end of the tunnel for about an hour, finding nothing but more "nice, fine-grained granite," and the occasional discarded drill or claw hammer, when an air current made its presence known. They glanced at each other.

  "Naw," Crash said, in disbelief.

  "You don't suppose…" Anders began.

  "No way. Oldest gimmick in the book," Crash answered with certainty.

  Anders licked his fingers and held them up, then followed the air flow to an obscured alcove in the right hand corner of the doorframe. "I'll be damned," he said in astonishment. "It is."

  The two men almost burst into laughter as they stared at the air vent.

  * * * *

  Crash was working hard on the frame of the vent grille when he froze all at once. "Whazzat?" he hissed.

  "What?" Anders asked in a normal tone, standing nearby.

  "Shush!" Crash replied in an urgent whisper. "Listen."

  A deathly hush fell on the tunnel then, as Anders paled and silenced.

  A silence that was broken by the sound of… footsteps.

  "Shit! Hurry up, Crash!" Anders hissed in a whisper. He half-crouched beside his friend, pressing his back against the steel door frame, and shoving his shoulder into the corner it made with the rock wall, as if to take refuge in the stone itself. "That sounds like a patrol coming from somewhere! And we've nowhere to hide!"

  "Don't I know it," Crash whispered, and began working faster on the screws holding the frame in place. He worked in complete silence for several more seconds, as the footsteps grew steadily louder.

  "Damn, damn, damn," Anders' breath tickled Crash's ear as he sighed the words. "We're dead."

  The footsteps came right up behind them--and stopped.

  Crash spun, to crouch beside Anders, who was staring back down the darkness of the tunnel.

  No one was there.

  "What the hell…?" Crash breathed.

  Staring deep into the darkness, Anders, nerves at fever pitch, thought he saw a momentary glint with his astronomer's eyes, as of a faint glimmer of light shining on dark, pebbled leather, but then it disappeared, and he couldn't be sure. Unconsciously, he grasped at the fetish hanging inside the collar of his jumpsuit, pulling it out and glancing down at the glittering lapis figure in his palm for a moment, before returning his attention to the dark tunnel.

  Then they heard a scraping sound, like boots on gravel. The footsteps began again, but this time started to fade, disappearing into the distance.

  "I… don't… get… it," Anders murmured, sagging back against the wide steel door frame and sliding down it until he was seated beside Crash on the stone floor, the fetish now clutched tightly in one hand, wrapped in a wrinkled wad of material. "What the hell was that about? And are we about to be descended upon, or not?"

  "Must have been an echo," the former flight controller decided, feeling his heart still pounding in his chest. "Maybe a patrol was on the other side of the door, and what sound there was echoed off the tunnel walls and got amplified. In which case, I guess we need to be a bit quieter after all."

  "Maybe," Anders agreed with more than a little dubiousness, "but I didn't hear any secondary echoes, did you?"

  "No…" Crash realized.

  But they spoke only in whispers thereafter, and Anders kept a careful watch on the tunnel while Crash finished his work.

  * * * *

  "Gotta get me one of those," Crash remarked as he handed the multi-tool back to Anders. "Not half bad."

  "Well, I used to carry a Swiss Army Knife, but I lost it somewhere in the radio telescope farm," Anders admitted, folding the tool and replacing it in his pocket. "Found this at the local convenience store, and got it as a replacement."

  "Works for me," Crash said, easing the grille out of the air vent and setting it to one side. "Okay, be quiet and let's get go
ing."

  "Er," Anders pointed into the vent. "Maybe you want this thing back." He pulled the multi-tool back out of his pocket.

  "Sonuva…" Crash griped, staring at the ventilation fan set a few feet inside the vent opening. "Yeah, give it to me…"

  * * * *

  Removal of the fan was a long, difficult, dirty job. The screws holding it in place were not in the best of shape, and Crash had to work slowly to avoid rusty squeaks and squawks. Not, he decided, that doing such work with a handheld multi-tool was exactly fast to begin with. In addition, there was the fact that the thing was choked with rock dust, lint, and God alone knew what other kinds of… well, there was no other word than "shit," Crash concluded. From time to time, a clot of it dislodged from somewhere inside the fan as he gradually worked that item of hardware loose, and dissolved into a cloud of greyish-brown gook that showered over him and threatened to choke him--or worse, cause him to cough or sneeze. Loudly. He only hoped there was nothing contagious in the filth that coated the entire fan assembly.

  With Anders helping to support the fan housing, preventing it from clanging and clattering about inside the duct, Crash managed to get it loose. They pulled it from the shaft and set it aside. "NOW let's go," he grumbled in a low voice.

  But as soon as he placed his full weight on the floor of the air duct, the thin, unsupported sheet metal flexed with a loud "WHONG!" which seemed to reverberate to infinity, down the dark depths of the vent shaft. Both men froze, as the sound died off into the distance.

  "Shit," Anders breathed finally.

  "What he said," Crash murmured. "Be careful."

  Chapter 19

  "I really don't believe this," Anders emitted the ghost of a chuckle as they crawled through the air tunnel. "It's like something from a bloody James Bond movie, I swear it is."

  "As long as we have Double Oh Seven's luck with the case, suits me fine," Crash whispered back. "I just hope we can get out without making tons of noi--"

  He broke off, both men falling silent, as voices floated down the duct.

  "Captain, do you have the report ready?" The voice had a distinct, heavy Russian accent.

  "Yes, sir. Anytime you are." Young American.

  "Good. Report to me in my office in half an hour, then. You can fill me in on how our captives are doing."

  "Wilco, sir."

  Their eyes met. Crash leaned forward and breathed into Anders' ear.

  "Found it, Bond."

  * * * *

  In order to avoid making noise in the flimsy duct, the two men had to travel much more slowly than they would have liked. Still, as they progressed, they were able to hear the chit chat of the two officers, now discussing the scheduling of meetings for the most part. Crash had hopes that they would soon return to the discussion of the "captives," and provide clues to their location.

  Suddenly a bright, momentary flash caught Crash's peripheral vision, drawing his attention, and he glanced up. "Shit," he breathed, as he noticed a tiny opening in the ceiling of the duct. It was from that opening that he had seen the flash. He glanced down. A small, polished metallic disc was set in the floor, directly below the opening. If Crash glanced at the disc out of the corner of his eye, a specular glint was just visible. "Yup," he confirmed, only loud enough to be audible to his companion.

  "What?" came the ghost of a familiar voice from behind him.

  "Laser," Crash answered in kind. "Sensors in the vent."

  "Shit," Anders answered.

  "Yeah."

  "How will we…?"

  "Let me think."

  They sat down in the metal tunnel and waited while Crash puzzled his way through their obstacle. Suddenly his eyes lit up, and a soft grunt escaped him. Reaching in his pocket, Crash produced his polished money clip. Anders raised his left eyebrow, watching.

  Crash removed what few bills remained, stuffing them into his pocket. Then he laid the clip down on the floor of the duct, near the polished metal disc. Carefully, slowly, he nudged it forward, using averted vision so that he could see the reflection point of the almost invisible beam. One last, swift push positioned it. "There," he whispered.

  They waited. And waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Then he grasped it gingerly between fingers and thumb, and began to lift it toward the roof of the duct.

  "Hope it isn't motion sensitive," Anders breathed his tension.

  "Me, too," Crash murmured. "But in an air conditioning duct, with all the air flow, I wouldn't think it'd be calibrated too sensitively."

  "Good point."

  When Crash had the money clip held close to the roof of the duct, he scootched as close to the side as he could get. "C' mere."

  "Huh?"

  "I need you to hold this while I get past, then I'll hold it for you."

  "Oh."

  Anders got himself as close to Crash as he could, and positioned himself to have a free hand to hold the clip steady. "Hey, there, big boy," he murmured, batting his eyes in a joking, suggestive fashion at the other man.

  "Hello yourself, sailor," Crash grinned, and eased himself by Mike, being careful not to so much as brush Anders' arm. Wordlessly, he set himself, then reached up to take the clip from Anders, nodding for him to get past the sensor. Anders gingerly squeezed past the larger Murphy, and nodded in reply.

  Crash eased the money clip back to the floor, then jerked it out of the way. Again they waited, and again, nothing happened.

  "You're good at this," Anders murmured.

  Crash shrugged, secretly pleased at the praise. "Not top-notch. But I had a little training, back in the day. Not too shabby, I think. About six months' worth of solid prep and training, all told. Military was gonna send me on a classified mission into…" he paused, wondering if the matter had been declassified yet. "Um, into some places where an American military officer wouldn't have been welcome, at all. So they got me ready to do some literal double-oh-seven stuff."

  "Aha. So you were gonna be a spy."

  "The brass prefers the term, ‘military intelligence.' It's not always an oxymoron, ya know, Mike."

  "Hush," Anders snapped in an undertone. "I hear conversation again."

  "Quick, then," Crash breathed. "Let's find the voices."

  * * * *

  In the nearest security monitoring station, a green light flickered red for a moment, then resumed its normal green glow, as a message flashed up on a computer screen. "Hey, Jack, we got another transient on Sensor Charlie Victor Four," one of the guards called.

  "Again?" Jack replied, bored. "That thing goes off all the time lately. Probably rats; there've been some reported in a couple ‘a the rooms near there. They get in through the air ducts from the old installation, then crawl past the fan blades when they're on the off part of the duty cycle. I keep telling the scientists not to leave their lunch scraps lying around, but they never listen."

  "Shouldn't we investigate?"

  "Nah, I've investigated that one enough for any twelve people," Jack remarked, disgusted. "I'm sick of it. Put in a maintenance report on it and let it go."

  "Wilco."

  * * * *

  The pair inched along the duct following the voices, until they came to a vent into a corridor. Crash and Anders stayed well out of sight of anyone in the corridor. The conversing officers, just on the other side of the vent, were completely unsuspecting of the eavesdroppers in their midst.

  "Is it time to move the prisoners again?" Russian asked.

  "No, sir," American replied. "They're still in Wing Bravo for now. Orders came down to vary the duration of stay, as well as location. They'll be there another week, per the current schedule."

  "Very good, then."

  "Sir, if you don't mind me asking…"

  The superior's tone softened. "Go ahead, Dynamo."

  "Well, sir, you can probably already guess the contents of my report."

  A sigh. "Yes, Dynamo, I think I can."

  "All seven of them, sir. So… what happens if t
hey just… won't?"

  "They will, soldier." The officer's tone was stern. "One way or another, they will."

  * * * *

  After the officers left, Anders and Crash carried on a soft conversation of their own, seated in the cold sheet metal duct work.

  "Okay…" Crash murmured, shocked and surprised to the point of lightheadedness.

  "Okay what?" Anders wondered.

  "They're… HERE." Murphy stared in shock at his companion.

  "The shuttle crew?!"

  "Yeah."

  "HERE?!" Anders fought to keep his voice down in his shock.

  "Yeah, looks like it."

  "But… but I thought they were…" Anders struggled to mentally shift gears. "I thought the aliens had ‘em? I thought we were just coming here to get information…"

  "I thought so, too," Crash agreed, his wide, somber eyes bespeaking his troubled confusion. "I thought the cover-up was about the fact that the aliens had kidnapped ‘em, tit for tat on our having aliens, alive or dead. But it's beginning to look like our own guys did the kidnapping."

  "That opens up a whole new can of worms, mate." Anders stared at Murphy in horror.

  "I know," Crash murmured, still struggling with his roiling emotions. "This just doesn't make any sense. We've got an alien spacecraft sighted by the shuttle instruments, and then the aliens abduct the crew for seeing them. Next there's a big cover-up by humans on humans; then we find the crew held prisoner in a secret underground Earth base--run by humans?" He shook his head, and Anders saw the movement in the faint light from the air conditioning louver. "Does that mean that our government--make that governments, plural, I guess--are working with an alien race?"

  "I… I dunno, mate," Anders answered, uncertain. "Maybe we aren't quite as… free… as we always thought we were? Maybe it's like that movie, and there's really aliens running the governments? Or maybe the governments have to report to the aliens?"

  Crash shook his head. "No, it makes no sense. There's no evidence of that. There's gotta be something we're missing. Why would humans get bent out of shape because a shuttle spotted hostile alien spacecraft? I'd think they'd be glad of the warning."

  "Unless…" Anders pondered, brainstorming, "…unless it wasn't really an alien spacecraft."