Power Failure

by Ben Bova

  Tomlinson shook his head. “After my father.”

  “Right. He wouldn’t want you to turn tail at the first sign of opposition.”

  The senator let out a long, pained sigh. “Your space plan better be goddamned good, Jake.”

  “It will be.”

  Turning to look out his window at the Capitol dome, Senator Tomlinson said, “All right, Jake. Thanks for your confidence in me.”

  Delighted, Jake said, “You’ll make a fine president, Frank.”

  “That’s what Pat told me.”

  “Lovett? You’ve spoken to him about this?”

  “Sure. We had lunch together.”

  Jake realized that Tomlinson had already made up his mind to run, despite Sebastian. He just needed me for a little additional moral support. A cheerleader, that’s what I am.

  As he got up from his chair and leaned across the desk to shake the senator’s hand, Jake told himself, Okay, I’ll be a cheerleader. All the way to the White House. And the Moon.

  The Announcement

  The summer grew hot. Washington turned into a muggy steambath. Congress adjourned. Like most of the politicians, Senator Tomlinson went back to his home state, to touch base with his constituents.

  Jake stayed in DC, hammering together his space plan.

  As expected, Senator Sebastian announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination just before Congress adjourned for the summer. Governor Davis Hackman, of Tennessee, threw his hat in the ring the following week. There were already four Democrats in the race, plus an aging billionaire businessman who was going for the White House as an independent for the third time.

  Patrick Lovett suggested that Tomlinson formally announce his candidacy on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. At Cape Canaveral.

  Kevin O’Donnell warned, “In Sebastian’s backyard? That’d be like slapping him in the face!”

  Tomlinson smiled patiently at his staff chief. “Pat’s my campaign manager, Kevin. Let him manage my campaign.”

  “But—”

  His smile brightening, the senator said, “You picked him for me, remember?”

  O’Donnell scowled, but said nothing.

  So on July 20, on a platform erected in front of the Saturn V rocket booster that had been turned into a public monument instead of the heavy-lift vehicle it had been designed to be, Senator B. Franklin Tomlinson announced, “I am a candidate for the presidency of the United States.”

  Jake and Tami sat on wooden folding chairs in the front row of the audience, under sunshades that protected the seated spectators. Still, the heat and steaming humidity were almost overpowering. And there were standees beyond the sunshade, nearly a thousand of them.

  Lovett’s done his work well, Jake thought as he sat perspiring beside Tami. The crowd might be mostly NASA workers who are afraid of the next round of layoffs, but it still looks good on TV.

  Up on the platform, with half a dozen TV cameras focused on his youthful form and smiling face, Tomlinson—his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows—was saying, “One of humankind’s greatest achievements was accomplished right here, at Kennedy Space Center. We had a president who said to the American people, ‘I think we should go to the Moon.’

  “And the American people responded. And the world watched in awe. We went to the Moon. We did it so well that many people to this day think it was easy. It wasn’t. It took the sweat and brains and skill of nearly a million men and women. It took the lives of three astronauts. But we went to the Moon and opened the way for the human race to go to the stars.”

  Jake found himself on his feet applauding, pounding his hands together—as was the whole audience. The improvised tent shook with cheers.

  Tomlinson waited patiently, in the heat and humidity, a pleased smile on his sweat-beaded face. Once the applause faded away, he resumed:

  “I think it’s time that we returned to the Moon. I think it’s time that we used the initiative and energy of private enterprise, teamed with the hard-earned capability of NASA and relevant other government agencies, to go back to the Moon and use its resources to generate new jobs, whole new industries, and new goals for the American people and the people of the entire world.”

  The crowd surged to its feet again, clapping, whistling, cheering mightily. The TV crews swung their cameras around to show their impassioned reaction.

  Tomlinson smiled brilliantly, the perspiration trickling down his handsome face now, and concluded, “Back to the Moon!”

  * * *

  The cocktail party in the visitors’ center was jam-packed. Just about everyone from the audience outside had streamed into the building’s air-conditioned gift shop, talking and accepting iced drinks amid rows of stands offering space-related souvenirs: model rockets, books, toys, memorabilia. Even with the building’s cooling cranked up to full blast, Jake felt sweaty, sticky.

  Tami seemed perfectly comfortable, though, as she sipped at a diet soda while the crowd surged around her.

  “He’s a spellbinder,” she said to Jake, her voice raised over the noise of hundreds of excited conversations.

  Jake was looking up at the makeshift stage at the front of the big room, where Tomlinson and Senator Sebastian were smiling side by side for the TV news teams—and the hundreds of cameras flashing among the onlookers.

  “They seem happy with each other,” Tami said.

  “So did Caesar and Brutus,” said Jake, “until the knives came out.”

  * * *

  The whole Tomlinson staff flew back to Washington on the senator’s private jet. Lovett seemed happy with the TV news coverage. Even O’Donnell admitted that the campaign had gotten off to a good start.

  Once they landed at Reagan National, the senator and his wife slipped into their waiting limousine with Lovett and O’Donnell. Everyone else went to their own cars or hailed taxicabs. Jake and Tami took a cab to their condo and collapsed into bed, exhausted by the day’s heat and emotions.

  “It’s a good start,” Jake muttered as he slipped into sleep.

  Tami nodded and kissed him, but said, “Now comes the hard work.”

  * * *

  Once he arrived at the Hart building the next morning, Jake pored over the news coverage of the senator’s speech. Mostly positive, he saw, even though there was some sniping at the “space cadet” angle.

  O’Donnell barged into Jake’s office, his face dark as a thundercloud.

  “Didn’t you send Sebastian a copy of your program?” he demanded, without preamble.

  “Last week,” Jake said. “What’s the problem?”

  Plopping himself down on the chair in front of Jake’s desk, the staff chief said, “I just got a call from his office, asking me where your goddamned report is. And Sebastian in on the horn with our man, complaining that Frank sprung his space program to the public without letting him see the plan first.”

  “But I sent it to him,” Jake insisted. “It’s the preliminary program, a lot of the details still have to be filled in, but I sent it to him the same day I sent it to you, Kevin.”

  O’Donnell glared at Jake like an interrogator trying to pry a confession from a suspect. “They claim they never got it.”

  Jake reached for his desk phone.

  “Who’re you calling?”

  “The delivery service that carried the plan to Sebastian’s office,” Jake said. “I e-mailed the document to him and sent a hard copy through the Senate’s delivery service. They’ll have a record of who accepted the package.”

  But the delivery service had no such record. Frustrated, growing angry, Jake wound up talking with the service’s supervisor, while O’Donnell sat glowering before him with his arms folded across his narrow chest.

  At last Jake hung up, defeated. “They claim they have no record of picking up the package from me. Kevin, I know I handed it to one of their kids.”

  “Did you get a receipt?”

  Jake shook his head. “No. He didn’t ask me if I wanted one. I thou
ght—”

  Strangely, O’Donnell smiled. It was not a pleasant thing to see. “You got snookered, Jake. Sebastian must have told his people to make your report disappear.”

  “But the delivery service…”

  “Senator Sebastian has a lot more clout than you do, pal.”

  “His people can tinker with the delivery service?”

  O’Donnell pushed himself up from the chair. “He’s serving notice. He’s going to war against us.”

  The Mars Lobby

  Tami was in her element, happily arranging news conferences and interviews for Senator Tomlinson, and helping to get him invited to meetings and conferences that he could use as platforms for publicity.

  Just before the new school year opened, at the National Teachers Conference, Tomlinson used a line from Patrick Henry before the news media TV coverage:

  “China is planning to establish a permanent base on the Moon. India has already sent robotic spacecraft to Mars. Why stand we here idle?”

  “I told you he’s a spellbinder,” Tami said to her husband over dinner that night. “And he’s going to get a lot of the women’s vote, too.”

  “Because he looks like a movie star,” Jake replied, between mouthfuls of roast beef.

  “Because his stand on women’s issues is intelligent and well thought-out,” she countered, jabbing the air with her fork. “That’s rare for your party.”

  Jake nodded, hoping his wife would let the subject drop then and there.

  Kevin O’Donnell still stalked the office like a gloomy ghost, although he stopped muttering “Captain Moonbeam” in Jake’s hearing.

  Jake was surprised, though, that the various grassroots space organizations weren’t more vociferous in their support of Tomlinson.

  “Count your blessings,” O’Donnell advised. “Most of those kooks would do our man more harm than good. They’re the real space nuts.”

  Jake disagreed. “Kevin, those people have been pushing for a stronger space program all their lives. They’re our natural allies.”

  “With friends like them, who needs enemies?” O’Donnell muttered.

  Jake found out what he meant a few days later.

  His name was Derek Vermeer. He was the executive director of the Mars Habitat League. He had requested a meeting with Senator Tomlinson, but O’Donnell had decided that Jake should listen to what he had to say first.

  Vermeer was tall, imposing, with a gray Vandyke beard and piercing sky-blue eyes. He wore a three-piece suit of dark gray despite the August heat, with a red lapel button that bore the motto “Mars Now!”

  Jake went out to the front office to meet him and shake his hand.

  As he guided the visitor through the maze of desks toward his own office, Jake apologized, “I’m sorry the senator couldn’t meet you in person—”

  “I understand,” Vermeer said, in a deep, resonant voice.

  Jake showed him into his office, and before they could sit down, Jake’s executive assistant asked if they’d like something to drink. Vermeer requested iced tea, Jake opted for club soda.

  As he lowered himself onto his desk chair, Jake said, “I understand the Mars Habitat League wants to send a group of volunteers to Mars.”

  Vermeer nodded solemnly. “On a one-way trip. We plan to live on Mars.”

  Keeping a straight face, Jake said, “So I’ve heard.”

  The executive assistant came back into the office with their drinks. Vermeer downed half his iced tea in one long gulp, then put the beaded glass on Jake’s desktop beside the coaster that waited there.

  “As you no doubt know,” Vermeer said, “we are crowdsourcing our funding.”

  Jake nodded. “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly, I’m afraid.” The expression on his face hardening, he went on, “I am here to find out why there is no mention of Mars in your so-called space plan. No mention at all.”

  Jake heard the imperious tone of Vermeer’s voice, saw the accusation in his piercing blue eyes.

  As evenly as he could Jake replied, “Our plan is aimed at developing the resources of the Moon and cislunar space to create new industries, new jobs—”

  “We’ve been to the Moon,” Vermeer snapped. “Now it’s time to go to Mars.”

  “You’re free to go to Mars. We won’t stop you.”

  “Oh no? Your ‘Back to the Moon’ nonsense will soak up funding that’s vital for the Mars Habitat mission. You’re preventing dedicated men and women from reaching Mars!”

  “Wait a minute,” Jake said, raising a hand. “Once you get to Mars, what are you going to do there?”

  “Spend the rest of our lives there. Encourage more people to join us. Extend the frontier of human habitation.”

  “You plan to build greenhouses on Mars? Grow crops there?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I don’t know that we have the technology to sustain a colony on Mars for long. You might be killing yourselves.”

  “We’re willing to sacrifice our lives to extend the human frontier. We demand that you include human missions to Mars in your so-called space plan.”

  Jake shook his head. “I’m sorry. Our plan is aimed at developing practical industrial development, not colonization of Mars.”

  “But you’ve got to include Mars! We demand it!”

  “I’m sorry,” Jake repeated. “It’s going to be difficult enough to sell our plan to the voters. Adding a permanent Mars colony will only make things more difficult, impossibly difficult. It might shoot down the entire plan.”

  For several long moments Vermeer glowered at Jake, trying to stare him down.

  At last his expression eased, softened. “You don’t understand,” he said, almost in a whisper. “I have a tumor. Inoperable. I only have a few years to live.” He took in a deep, painful breath. “I want to die on Mars.”

  Sadly, Jake shook his head. “The best I can offer you is to promise that we will bury your remains on Mars as soon as it’s practicable.”

  Vermeer said nothing. He got up from his chair, drew himself to his full height, and walked out of Jake’s office without saying another word.

  National Air and Space Museum

  Despite himself, Jake felt awed, humbled, amid the treasures of the past. Over his head was the original Wright Brothers’ Flyer, the first heavier-than-air machine to actually fly. A few yards away stood the Apollo 11 command module, the spacecraft that had carried Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the Moon and back.

  The museum was packed with flying hardware, planes, rockets, everything from Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis to the X-15 rocket plane to the complete backup hardware for the Skylab space station.

  And the place was jammed, Jake saw. Tourists, foreign visitors, goggle-eyed kids, and grizzled veterans of the aerospace industry milled through the museum, paying homage to the history of flight, the conquest of the air, the quest to reach other worlds.

  Jake wondered how he would find Roland T. Jackson in the midst of the throng that was ogling, pointing, chattering through the museum.

  “Dr. Ross?”

  Startled, Jake looked down on the small, slight figure of Rollie Jackson. He was a legend in the aerospace industry, a man who had designed some of the most significant flying machines the world had ever seen. And there he was, standing before Jake in a checkered sports jacket and dark slacks, tiny almost as a leprechaun, slim, his face bony, with prominent cheekbones, his eyes large and dark, his hair thinning and silver-gray. He reminded Jake of a lemur, with his big dark eyes, yet he smiled up at Jake in a warm, friendly way.

  “Dr. Jackson!” Jake blurted.

  “Mr. Jackson,” he corrected. “All the degrees they’ve stuck onto my name are honorary. I never finished high school, had to go out and support my mother and two brothers.”

  Jake swallowed once before stammering, “I … I’m delighted to meet you, sir.”

  “Come on,” Jackson said, “let’s find someplace quiet where we can talk.”

&nb
sp; He led Jake through the crowd, up an escalator, and across the museum’s upper floor, casually pointing out airplanes and spacecraft as if they were his personal heirlooms. And that’s exactly what they are, Jake marveled to himself. His personal handiwork. He designed the birds he’s pointed to. Designed them and a good deal of their inner systems.

  At last they reached a door marked STAFF ONLY. Jackson pulled a plastic card from his jacket pocket and held it to the sensor on the door frame. The door slid open and Jackson gestured Jake through.

  It was blessedly quiet here. The corridor was lined with doors marked with people’s names and titles. When they reached Jackson’s door, at the end of the corridor, it bore his name, without a title.

  Before Jake could work up the nerve to ask, Jackson grinned crookedly and said, “They wanted to put ‘Resident Genius’ on my door but I couldn’t let them do that. On the museum’s organization chart I’m listed as a full-time consultant.”

  Jake’s research into NASA’s organizational history had led him to Jackson. He actually had been the agency’s resident genius for decades before retiring from NASA to accept a sinecure at the museum, reportedly to live out his years surrounded by the air and space craft he had designed.

  He led Jake into the windowless office. There was no desk, just five deeply cushioned leather chairs and, in one corner, a draftsman’s tilted drawing board and a three-legged stool.

  “Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and tell me about this plan of yours to get us back to the Moon.”

  * * *

  For nearly two hours Jake explained his plan and the reasoning behind it. Jackson stayed quiet for the most part, asking a question now and then, offering a comment here and there. At one point he went to a mini fridge built into the cabinets that lined one wall and pulled out two bottles of ginger beer. Jake took the soda gratefully.

  At last Jake said, “And that’s about it. I’ve got a feeling NASA isn’t enthusiastic about it, though.”

  Jackson pursed his lips thoughtfully and nodded.

  “Why should they be?” he asked.

  Surprised, Jake stuttered, “Well … because we … the plan, that is … will reinvigorate our efforts in space.”