Back to the Moon (20 page)

Penny hesitated, then typed:

YOU DON'T KNOW WHO I AM.

The laptop whirred again.

PENNY. I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. THIS IS WONDERFUL. WE'LL MAKE MILLIONS ON THE BOOK.

Penny stared at the screen, slowly pecked in her response.

OSCAR?

SOME WONDERFUL PEOPLE BROUGHT THIS DELIGHTFUL MACHINE TO MY OFFICE. THEY ARE HERE WITH ME NOW.

HOW DO I KNOW IT'S YOU?

THE FIRST THING I EVER SAID TO YOU WAS THAT YOU OUGHT TO BRAID YOUR HAIR INTO PIGTAILS, STICK A FEATHER IN YOUR HAIR LIKE PRINCESS SUMMERFALL WINTERSPRING. YOU TOLD ME TO STUFF IT. PENNY THE NEWSPAPERS AND TELEVISION ARE GOING NUTS OVER THIS THING. BUT THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT I KNOW. KEEP YOURSELF SAFE DARLING BUT GO ALONG ON THIS JOURNEY AND KEEP WRITING! IF YOU DO THIS, YOU'RE GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST SUPERSTAR ON EARTH!

“What are you going to do, Dr. High Eagle?” She turned, saw Virgil peering over her shoulder at the screen.

Penny turned back to the SAREX, her fingers poised over the keyboard. But she was at a loss what to type. It wasn't Oscar's hide hanging out in orbit with a couple of loonies. Penny moved away from the keyboard, squinted at Virgil. “Why are we here?” she demanded.

Virgil hooked his foot through a footloop and settled in beside her. “We have a contract.”

Penny's eyes flashed. “I know you have a contract, you big idiot. But who with and to do what?”

“It's around here somewhere,” he said. “I'll look for it.”

“Do that, Virgil. And while you're at it, see if you can round me up some other fiction too. I always enjoy a good read.”

An hour later, with both Virgil and Jack sleeping soundly, Penny found Paco and took him in her arms and went to the cockpit and strapped herself in. She watched the earth turn below, the beautiful blue, implacable earth. She couldn't think clearly no matter how hard she tried to order her mind. She had never been so confused and yet so strangely excited. And as much as she hated to admit it, no small part of that excitement was caused by the strange, handsome, scarred, obviously disturbed man she had stripped, washed, and put away in a sleeping bag as if he were her child.

MET 2 DAYS AND COUNTING . . .

THE PEG

OSC Manufacturing Plant, Dulles, Virginia

Joe Rodriguez was the Orbital Science Company group leader assigned the task of rapidly preparing a
Pegasus
rocket for the Air Force's “demonstration” in space. The point of the demo wasn't exactly clear to Rodriguez, but in any case it was above his pay grade to worry about. He just had the job to do. Rodriguez and his people were working on “Peg” in a clean room of the plant just twenty miles from downtown Washington, D.C. Because of its proximity to the Pentagon, it didn't take long for General Carling to dispatch a team of Air Force inspectors to Dulles to bird-dog Rodriguez and his troops. Rodriguez was not surprised. He was used to having government inspectors looking over everything he and his team did, often as they were doing it. Rodriguez was just sealing a Peg electronics test and checkout panel when he heard a whoosh of air and saw six Air Force officers, all dressed in “bunny suits”—clean-room uniforms—enter the room. Rodriguez and his team were dressed the same, white full-legged smocks, legs tucked into white shoes, arms with elastic bands at the wrist, collars buttoned up to the neck, a white surgeon's mask, and translucent latex gloves. A clear plastic cap pulled down to the ears completed the outfit. Only the eyes of the engineers were left uncovered. Moisture and dust, including dandruff, hair, and flakes off human skin, were all potentially cloggers of the delicate internal Peg mechanisms.

OSC had chosen a
Pegasus-
E (
E
for “enhanced”) launcher. The trim little rocket with wings sat on its trunnion support. Rodriguez directed his techs to keep working and walked over to meet the Air Force cohort. After introductions all around, the leader of the inspectors, a Colonel Ted Wingate, wanted to see the payload. Rodriguez led him to one of the tables that had been set up around the Peg. He gestured toward a thick aluminum cylindrical canister, covered with a dozen intricate devices that looked a bit like claws, each of which had a bundle of cable leading to it. “This is our small assembly deployment device. We've had SADD under development for some time. It's never been used in space but it's passed all its design reviews.”

“What does it do, Joe?” Wingate asked, assuming the easy informality of the aerospace community.

“It's designed to carry a number of small satellites aboard a single launcher,” Rodriguez explained. Seeing the quizzical look on the blue-suiters, he explained further. “A lot of small companies or universities can't afford to pay for their own launcher. The idea is that they can save money by combining their payload with a bunch of others, everybody riding on the same rocket.”

“You're going to put the water bags aboard this SADD, then?”

“Yes. The water bags will be attached in bundles to each of these clamps. The wires have squibs attached that will automatically deploy the clusters. A timer will blow other squibs within the bundle. The trick to this will be deploying all the water bags in the proper pattern. We think we've solved that too. Of course we'd like to run a test —”

“There's no time for that,” Wingate said, eyeing the SADD appreciatively. “Beautiful design. I hope it works.”

Rodriguez shrugged. “You fly without testing, you never know.”

Wingate didn't respond to the comment. What was there to say? Rodriguez led the blue-suiters to another table to show them the water bags. “What do you call them besides water bags?” Wingate asked.

Rodriguez grinned. “The boys came up with the Space Punitive Reaction Against Hijacking. Pronounced “spray.”

“Spray, huh?” Wingate laughed. “If you want to be politically correct, better change the
P
to stand for “Protective.' The President doesn't believe in punishing people.”

Rodriguez nodded, remembering President Edwards's opposition to capital punishment. Wingate studied the bags, each a black polypropylene packet about six inches square. Rodriguez handed one of them to the colonel. “The plan is for the
Pegasus
to rendezvous with the shuttle and deploy SPRAH in a circular pattern with a slight retrograde motion. Timers will rupture the bags. Should be quite a show when all that water crystallizes.”

Wingate moved the bag back and forth in his hands, the water inside making a sloshing sound. “Can the Peg get close enough to
Columbia
for the spacejackers to see it coming at them?”

“We think so.”

Wingate grinned. “That ought to scare the shit out of those bastards!”

Rodriguez shrugged. He wasn't so certain. “We'll use a minisensor to home in on the shuttle. The boys in the back room just assembled it.”

“And what's that package called?”

Rodriguez could not help but look embarrassed. “The guys call it the Nakey.”

“Nakey?”

“From the group leader's comment when he was told to build it in twenty-four hours. Not a chance in hell. N-A-C-I-H. Nakey.”

Wingate put the bag back on the table. “You've done a fantastic job, Joe. Box your Peg up as soon as you can. Orbital insertion in twelve hours.”

An Air Force major spoke up. “Joe, are you sure this won't damage
Columbia
? Looks like there could be a lot of debris flying around up there.”

Rodriguez frowned at the major.
I sure hope not
was what he wanted to say. “It's not supposed to” was the best he could muster.

The Researcher

Shirley Grafton was still officially listed as a researcher on the vice president's staff, but over the last two years she had become more of a confidante, attuned to her boss's restless mind. She had come to Washington from her native South Carolina with a degree in journalism from East Carolina State to work as an intern with
The Washington Post.
There she found herself just one of two dozen young women graduates, all trying desperately to get a byline. By chance she'd heard the veep needed someone who loved to spend time in front of computer, or in a library, and began the long interview process. When Vanderheld met Shirley for the final once-over, their minds had clicked. Both of them knew it. There was nothing romantic, of course—Vanderheld was a widower with a passel of kids, two of whom were older than Shirley—but their brains, both curious for knowledge, seemed to work in tandem from the first day they were together. After a while Shirley felt as if she was an extension of the vice president, his mobile self able to travel to do research while he was stuck in the tedium of the political jungle of Washington. She was always ready and eager for any quest for information he gave her. Vanderheld's interests were kaleidoscopic—everything from the melting of the glaciers in Antarctica to the poverty in the new dust belt down in Oklahoma. Always, it seemed to Shirley, Vanderheld sought knowledge to better people's lives. Shirley was proud to tell acquaintances and family that she worked for a man who would go down in history as doing more for the poor and the unrepresented than any politician since Franklin Roosevelt.

Shirley attended the vice president's FBI briefing on the second day of
Columbia
's hijack. The President would be getting the same briefing, the man said, in Iraq. The latest information was that the attorney general had some Florida lawyer tucked away who claimed to represent the hijackers. The lawyer had said their leader was a man named Jack Medaris. He had also confirmed that Craig “Hopalong” Cassidy had been part of the plot. The third hijacker was a man named Virgil Judd. Not much was known about him. Medaris, however, was well known to the FBI. He had brilliantly headed up the group that fixed the shuttle's solid rocket boosters after the
Challenger
disaster. And then he had been involved in a test stand accident that had killed his pregnant wife, an engineer on the team, and put him in the hospital for months. When the government brought charges of dereliction and manslaughter against him, he'd resigned and the charges were dropped. Although apparently he'd had some success with a start-up called MEC in Cedar Key, Florida, he had recently been dealt another blow when a fire had destroyed part of his factory. Arson had been suspected. Although the FBI had not done a psychological profile on Medaris, it was believed that he had snapped, hijacking the shuttle perhaps as an act of revenge against NASA or the government.

The FBI agent said the attorney general had ordered all news of the lawyer and the hijackers to be kept from the press for the time being. Media speculation was rampant, most of it suggesting that homegrown terrorists were responsible. An Internet reporter had come up with the story on the DOT and NASA million-dollar checks but no one could figure that one out. The media was broadcasting the public's calls for action but it wasn't clear what could be done.

The vice president thanked the briefing agent, emphasized the report's confidentiality to his staff, and dismissed them. As the group of technocrats filed out, Vanderheld stopped Shirley. “Wait with me a bit,” he requested, remaining silent until everyone else had gone, the door to his office closing behind them. “Listen, Shirley—do something for me,” he said. “The FBI's report is pretty shallow. We need more information. Dig into that accident that killed Medaris's wife.”

Shirley wrote down the note and then just seemed to catch what the vice president was thinking out of the air. “You think this Medaris is dangerous to the country, don't you, sir?”

Vanderheld slouched in his chair. “Isn't that clear by his actions?” The old man cocked his head. “We may need to prepare the public for a stronger response.”

“Stronger response, sir?”

Vanderheld held her eyes. “Desperate people do desperate things, Shirley. I don't know what Medaris has in mind but I guess we're not going to like it when we find out. We may need to destroy
Columbia
before this is all done. If we do, we'll have to justify our actions to the American people. If Medaris is a madman or a terrorist, we need to know that.”

Shirley made the note. “Sir, I've looked back at your record and your general opposition to the space program—”

“I'm not opposed to the space program.” The veep smiled, opening his hands in that way he had, as if he were embracing his subject. “I am opposed to government waste. It just happened to fall on my plate to question the huge outlays of cash for dubious programs starting with
Apollo
and continuing through
Aurora.
”

Shirley's pen was still poised over the pad. She thought it best not to write what the veep had just said, but to carefully probe. A researcher had to know the best approach to her questions, even when interrogating her boss. She needed to know what he really thought. It always helped her research if she did. “Could you tell me why?” she asked.

“It's all in my Senate speeches,” Vanderheld said, a little irritably. He looked tired, worn-out, she suddenly thought. “Let me just put it in a nutshell for you, Shirley,” he said, sighing. “There are too many starving children who need to be fed, too many endangered species that need protecting, too much hate and mean-spiritness that needs to be stopped, too many wrongs to be righted, for the government's money to be spent on something that just gives us pretty pictures of planets or makes us feel good about ourselves. The truth is—and I don't like this any better than anybody else—space is not somewhere we're ever going to go, nor is it a place where we're going to get any kind of a dividend, certainly not equal to the investment it takes to do anything up there. It's just a circus, entertainment for the masses, and that's not the job of government.”

Shirley was intrigued at how passionate the veep was on the subject. It was one thing to hear a speech read, another to get an extemporaneous response. “Yet there are millions who believe in it,” she said, her statement meant to elicit more information.