Moonfall (30 page)

TRANSGLOBAL SPECIAL REPORT
. 9:51
P.M.

Moonbase, McNair Country. 9:53
P.M.

Jack closed the door behind him and sank onto his sofa. It was getting late, and if he didn’t leave soon the decision would become moot. He looked up and saw the photo of Jeanie and the three kids taken years ago on Cape Cod. They’d all been young then, Jeanie apparently in the bloom of health. But even then the disease had sunk its roots into her. She’d fought it until the last of the kids were gone, and then she’d collapsed. Six weeks later he’d lost her.

There were other photos: here, he was accepting a Special Performance Award from Evelyn; there, his features were superimposed over a graphic of the Moon. Over the desk was a citation from the Boston Chamber of Commerce; and by the door, a scroll from the U.S. Contract Bridge League:

OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP, PAIRS
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE, JUNE 2–4, 2017
FRED HAWLEY, JACK CHANDLER

He’d been reared a strict Baptist. It was a way of life he’d been happy to escape, but he envied now the quiet faith of his boyhood, the conviction that he would see again everyone he cared about.

Jeanie. Luminous eyes. Mischievous smile. He missed that most of all.

It occurred to him that he
had
known all along what his decision would be. He had, after all, left the photo on the shelf.

He went into the bathroom, opened the cabinet, and took down a container of tranquilizers. He shook a half dozen out into a trembling palm and looked at them a long time before he filled a glass and drank them down.

He’d sent messages of farewell to his children. They’d been phrased against the backdrop of events, couched in ambiguous terms suggesting he might be unable to escape.
Evelyn would, he knew, conceal the truth.

He laid his head back against the cushions, closed his eyes, and waited for the tranquilizers to take hold.

Moonbase Spaceport. 9:57
P.M.

Morley was talking into a microcam when they reentered the station. “…here they are now,” he was saying. Following his directions, Evelyn climbed first out of the tram. And then Charlie. “Mr. Vice President,” he said, maneuvering Charlie into the eye of the microcam, which he’d attached to a wall, “I wonder if I can get you to say a few words. What’s your feeling at this moment?”

Dumb
. But Charlie gave it his best: “They tell me that Tony Casaway and Alisa Rolnikaya”—he pronounced her name deliberately, taking great care to get it right—“are two of the best pilots we have. I’m confident this’ll have a happy ending.”

Bigfoot appeared. “The Micro’s running on time,” he said in the overdramatic, wooden manner of a poor amateur actor. Charlie decided he’d been cued. “We’ll be leaving from Bay Four.”

He waited a minute or so for a brief exchange between Morley and the vice president. Yes, admitted Charlie, this was an unnerving situation and he’d feel better when he was on his way. Then he turned the interview around, asking Morley for
his
thoughts. The reporter was amenable and laughed, and they recorded a conversation that Charlie knew was going well.

“This won’t be the end of manned space flight,” Charlie told the television audience, by way of rounding off the interview. “One way or another, we’ll be back.”

He didn’t really think so, though it seemed like the right thing to say. But if “back” meant out in space again, it wasn’t going to happen. The economics wouldn’t support it. Maybe manned space flight would happen again one day, but it would
be far down the line somewhere, so far down that he suspected the human race might have time to forget it had ever traveled to its Moon. He’d always been a supporter of Moonbase International and the Lunar Transport Authority and NASA, but he knew which way the wind would blow after this. The next campaign would be about fiscal sanity. Next time, they’d let another generation impoverish itself.

Briefly, they’d touched the sky. And it had been to no purpose.

A vast emptiness opened inside him. The White House seemed far away, as remote and unattainable as Mars. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he was not sure for whom they came—himself, or something far greater.

Bigfoot was gritting his teeth and looking at his watch. Charlie signaled that was enough. Morley thanked him on camera, signed off, shut down, and thanked him again.

Bigfoot led them into the passenger waiting area. “I’ll be talking to you over the PA,” Bigfoot said. “When I ask you to, go down that tunnel over there.” He pointed. “The door’ll be closed at the far end. It’ll open when the Micro’s down. There’ll be a tube. Go through the tube and into the passenger cabin. As quick as you can. Okay? I don’t need to emphasize that there’ll be no time to waste.”

“What about you?” asked Evelyn.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be going in through a different door.” He started out of the room, but turned back. “Good luck,” he said.

He left them and Evelyn looked at her watch. “Getting late. What do you think’s keeping Jack?”

Moonbase, McNair Country. 10:01
P.M.

The medication obviously wasn’t working. He opened the bottom drawer in a side table and extracted a bottle of Scotch. He filled a tumbler, straight, and drank it down. Its warmth
spread through him and the tension began to dissipate.

His cell phone chimed. “Jack?” Evelyn’s voice. “For God’s sake, where are you? It’s late.”

“I’ve decided not to go, Evelyn.”

“Jack, you can’t do this.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“I think we should talk about this
later
. Where are you now?”

“My apartment.”

“My God, Jack—”

“That’s right. I couldn’t get over there in time if I wanted to.”

“Jack—” He heard her struggle to control her voice. It felt good to know she really cared about him. Other than professionally.

“Good luck, Evelyn. You’ll make it. And thanks for everything.”

He disconnected. When the cell phone chimed again he took out the batteries and laid it on a table. Then he pulled the jack on the table phone.

He walked over and looked at his certificate from the Wilmington bridge tournament. That had been a good weekend. One of his best.

He poured a second glass of Scotch.

Moonbase Spaceport. 10:02
P.M.

“I’m going after him.”

Charlie had overheard Evelyn’s side of the conversation. “There isn’t time,” he said. “You don’t even know where he is.”

“He’s in his quarters. Where else would he be?”

“He’s in his quarters
now
. It doesn’t matter. He’s made his choice, Evelyn. You have to respect it.” He drew her to him and held her. Her cheeks were wet and she was trembling.

“I should have known,” she said.

“How could you have possibly known?”

She started to answer, but broke it off and simply held him. And Charlie remembered the silent message he’d seen passed to her from Chandler.

“
I love you
.”

“Damn him,” she said quietly.

7.

Manhattan. 10:03
P.M.

Louise Singfield lived in a rooftop apartment in a four-story brownstone on 77th Street just off Central Park. It was perfect for a moonwatch party.

Marilyn and Larry arrived by taxi, identified themselves through the intercom, and were admitted. They rode a creaky elevator to the fourth floor and climbed a staircase the rest of the way. Louise’s door opened off a narrow landing.

There was laughter inside and familiar voices. Marilyn immediately recognized Doug Cabel, Larry’s boss. She didn’t like Cabel, not because of anything he’d ever done, or even
was
, but because of the way her husband turned into a toady in his presence. Larry was a good man: He treated her well, made a decent living, didn’t cheat, didn’t demonstrate any major vices. Yet he seemed to be admirable for what he didn’t do rather than for what he
did
. She’d been married three years and had come to realize that she was making do. The great romance she’d dreamed of in college, like the ones she read about every day in her job, had not happened. And now, she knew,
would
not happen.

Well, it could have been worse.

Louise’s door opened and there stood the hostess herself. She wore a white blouse with navy collar and sleeves and navy slacks. The blouse was cut to reveal some breast. A bit much, Marilyn thought, for a casual office BYOB affair.

“Good to see you, Marilyn,” Louise said, delivering a peck on the cheek. She accepted a kiss from Larry and introduced her boyfriend
du jour
. Mike Somebody-or-other.

Marilyn knew most of the people there. Larry’s department did a lot of socializing. Doug believed it was good for morale and he encouraged it.

They contributed their bottle of Jamaica rum to the cache, made a couple of daiquiris, and went out onto the terrace. Larry paid his customary obeisance to Doug. Doug commented on this being quite a night, and then asked how the
Kiplinger’s
report on BRK Merchandising should be handled. Or something of that nature.

The comet had grown appreciably from night to night. Now it commanded the sky east of the Moon. Nearby stars had faded, and when Marilyn walked to the far edge of the terrace, near the roof and away from the lights, she thought the illumination from the comet strong enough that she could have read by it.

Marv Taylor joined her. “Spooky, isn’t it?” he said.

Marv, like Larry, was an account executive. He was quiet, introspective, gentle. His eyes were light blue, like the sky during late morning, and they seemed always amused and sad at the same time, as if he knew the truth about her. (What
was
the truth about her?) He was not married. There’d been a fiancée when she’d first met him. But the woman was gone and Marilyn, for reasons she did not entirely understand, had been relieved at her departure.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I’ve never seen a sky like that.”

He was not drinking. “This’ll be a night to tell your grandkids about.”

Marilyn tasted her daiquiri. It was strawberry. “Larry thinks it’ll fizzle. He says astronomical stuff, comets specifically,
always
fizzle.”

He smiled. “He’s probably right,” he said.

She looked into his eyes.
Marv Taylor, I’d like very much to bed you
. But she wouldn’t. If she were sure she could get away with it, she’d think seriously about giving it a try. She felt entitled to one real passion during her life. But she’d get caught. Larry would know.

On the other hand, if this really turned out to be the end of the world, as some people were saying, what difference would it make?

White House, Oval Office. 10:04
P.M.

The Moon wasn’t visible from his windows. Henry had set up a hot line for the state governors, had resisted nationalizing the Guard (which would only serve to encourage those elements in the nation that were given to panic), had talked with the heads of state of two dozen nations, had authorized full U.S. commitment to a UN Response Team, and had gone on national television with a fireside chat, FDR-style.

He was especially good in that format. Al Kerr had told him once that he oozed sincerity. He understood that people were upset, he’d explained. They were experiencing something quite disturbing. But Americans were not among those who would give way to hand-wringing and fear-mongering. (In fact, the media, he thought, had done quite a good job at keeping a lid on things.)

Should any effects of the distant collision (he emphasized
distant
) be felt in the U.S.A., he assured the nation that the government was ready to act with all the power at its disposal. The military had been deployed to lend assistance in the unlikely event it might be needed. Federal agencies were standing by. And he himself would spend the evening in the White House. He was planning to watch a good movie, and expected not to be disturbed.

He added, almost as an afterthought, that Vice President Haskell was still at Moonbase. He was proud of the vice presi
dent, and the five brave Americans who had remained with him. (He’d gotten carried away here. Morley was a New Zealander; Hampton was from Senegal; the chaplain was British; and, of course, one of the two pilots of the Micro, had they been mentioned, was Russian. But let it go. The nation needed pumping up.) A rescue effort was under way even as he spoke, and he was optimistic that everyone would be brought away safely.

Al shook his hand when he was done. It had been a masterful performance. The president had spoken from his living quarters on the second floor of the West Wing. The book-lined walls, the sputtering fire (a virtual effect, actually, because the evening was unseasonably warm), the family portraits, had all lent a sense of security and tranquillity to the proceedings.

There was, of course, no movie planned for the evening.

After the broadcast, Henry had returned to the Oval Office, taken a call from UN Secretary General Elie Kopacca on an unrelated matter, and then headed down to the situation room. In the holotank, a virtual comet closed in on Mare Muscoviense. Displays portrayed the comet from a dozen different points of view. On the far side of a glass partition, a dozen operators manned computers and phones. There were uniforms everywhere. He saw Mercedes Juarez deep in conversation with the liaison from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The situation room was essentially a military operation, usually a relatively blasé place run for the convenience of the commander-in-chief. When a crisis was in full swing, however, it could become the nation’s nerve center. The officer responsible for it was Rear Admiral Jay Graboski.