Orbital Decay (30 page)

Hamilton said, “Hey, you wanna come over to Forty-Two with me? I want you to take a look at something.” Then he casually brushed his right index finger against his nose. It was a move that he had copped from that old Newman-Redford movie,
The Sting
, when the good-guy crooks would signal to each other that the game was afoot. Hamilton had adapted it for his own purposes. When he did that, he meant:
hey
,
you wanna go smoke some pot
?

By this time, I had come to enjoy a smoking session in the Hydroponics bay two or three times a week. I kept from smiling, and raised my hand to casually brush my nose with my fingertip, when I saw that Hamilton wasn’t looking in my direction. I glanced that way, toward the other crewmen sitting around the table.

Mike, Joni, Chang, and Virgin Bruce… all had their index fingers raised and each was halfway through the motion of casually brushing off the tip of his or her nose. They all stopped and stared at each other in bewilderment, then each in turn stared back at Jack Hamilton, everyone having the same thought as I had initially held:
Hey
,
I thought this was between you and me only
,
Jack.
Hamilton himself was having a wonderful time, watching the silly looks on our faces as comprehension dawned on us. He had corrupted all of us. Virgin Bruce wasn’t the only outlaw in the room.

In the midst of that timeless moment, Popeye Hooker quietly rose from his seat and walked toward the ladder. Nobody seemed to notice that he was leaving, except for Jack and me. As the others broke up laughing—at themselves, not at Popeye—Jack and I traded a look. We both knew we had done something wrong. Of all the people on Skycan, Popeye was the last one who needed to be alienated from the bunch. He had recognized that an in-joke was being passed, and he wasn’t in on it, so that brief instance in which he had forgotten his own past and enjoyed a few minutes of friendship, of sitting around a table trading tall tales, had been ruined. Virgin Bruce could talk about his sins, but Popeye had something under his skin that prevented him from discussing his own sorrows. We had to face it: We had just kicked a cripple’s crutch out from under him.

Jack watched Hooker climb up the ladder out of the rec room, and I could tell that he wasn’t about to let his mistake slide. Jack was going to pull Popeye into the gang. Hamilton was that kind of a guy.

I
F ANYTHING, IT WAS
even hotter in French Guiana than it was in Huntsville, which did nothing to improve Clayton Dobbs’ disposition. The space engineer had to admit to himself that he was bred for cool, air-conditioned environments. If he had sweltered in the Alabama summer heat, then the tropical climate of this godforsaken South American country made him feel like he was standing in a blast furnace.

Once more, Dobbs wiped a sheen of sweat off his forehead as he again glanced over his shoulder at the Guiana Space Centre’s launch preparation and control center three miles away. From that distance he could only clearly make out the Vehicle Assembly Building, the new structure which had recently replaced Arianespace’s original VAB built in the 1980s. Not only had the Europeans lifted the design of the building from NASA’s identical structure on Merritt Island, but they had also blithely swiped the name. At one time that had bothered Dobbs, even though he harbored no great love for NASA. Now it didn’t matter; their VAB marked the location of the launch control center, the nearest accessible place that was air-conditioned. Jesus Christ, it was
hot
!

“Kenneth,” he said, still looking at the VAB through shimmering waves of heat rising from the long pavement leading from there to the launch pad. Not hearing a reply, he turned back around and said, more loudly, “
Kenneth
!”

Kenneth Crespin was still talking to the German launch technician, both of them carrying on a casual conversation in the technician’s mother tongue. Crespin irritably waved off Dobbs; the German glanced over his shoulder at him. “Clayton,” he said, “you know the rules concerning the launch pad personnel. Please, put on again your helmet.”

Dobbs looked down at the white plastic hard-hat dangling by its adjustment strap from his hand. He had taken it off because it was too warm. He glowered at the German, whom he had privately nicknamed Von Schmuck, and clapped the hat back on his head. Crespin was still staring at him. “And it would appear a little more couth if you would tuck in your shirttails and adjust your tie,” the vice-president added sourly.

“Damn it, who cares,” Dobbs muttered under his breath. He turned around and angrily shoved the bottom of his Brooks Brothers shirt into the front of his trousers, but ignored his tie. It was too hot for closing one’s collar. Turning around again, he found some pleasure in noticing the spreading sweat stains under Crespin’s arms and on his back. You’re not cool either, are you, Kenny?

Dobbs checked his watch. Less than an hour to launch, thank God, so at least they would soon be returning to the launch center. Once again, he studied the giant Ariane 5 HLV poised beside its umbilical mast. Cold steam rolled off the flanks of its cryogenic liquid booster, streaming down past the two strap-on boosters on its sides. The catwalk leading to the Hermes space-plane was still in place; inside the whiteroom fitted over the trim little spacecraft, technicians were doubtlessly still getting the two-man flight crew ready for launch. The servicing tower had been moved back on its tracks five hours earlier, and only a skeleton crew of workmen still roamed around the mobile launch platform and the mast. Like the Americans and the Russians, the Europeans had long ago conquered the necessity of multiple holds and some of the old uncertainties of whether or not the birds would get off the ground, but he had to hand it to Arianespace: The efficiency of their launch operations made Skycorp look sloppy.

Dobbs found himself looking at the servicing tower. Several hours earlier, in the dark hours before sunrise, he had been in that tower, crouched on a platform pressed against the Hermes’ open cargo bay as he went through the last-minute inspection of the spaceplane’s cargo. Only a couple of technicians had been with him then; one from Skycorp, the other from the European Space Agency, both with security clearances of the highest order. With the necessary exception of the French flight crew, only a handful involved with this routine launch from Kourou knew exactly what was being ferried to orbit in the Hermes. Just before the cargo bay hatches had been closed and sealed, Dobbs had reached out with his plastic-gloved right hand and had gently stroked the module’s side, bidding it goodbye.

Or rather, he reminded himself savagely,
hasta luego
rather than
adios.
In only a matter of weeks he would be reunited with his creation, on the Freedom space station out in space. Absently he kicked at the cinders under his feet, a cold clutch of fear in his gut temporarily—but not completely—offsetting the heat. Out in space. Shit, he thought. I’m an engineer. I live in front of a CAD/CAM terminal. What the hell am I doing going up into outer space?

A whistle sounded over the loudspeakers surrounding the launch site and a voice said a few words in French, which Dobbs didn’t understand, but he noted a subtle increase in activity around the tower. It was time to vacate the pad. Crespin and the German began striding toward the van parked nearby, where several workmen were already gathered. One of them had produced a bottle of Dom Perignon from the cooler Dobbs had glimpsed in the van’s rearmost seat earlier and was untwisting the wire cage which held down the cork; the others were waiting around expectantly with paper cups in hand. “Oh, for God’s sake, now the launch crew is going to get pickled,” Dobbs murmured in Crespin’s ear.

“No, they’re going to drink a toast,” Crespin replied, giving Dobbs an annoyed glance. “It’s a long-standing tradition. If it gets their rockets launched on time to celebrate each launch as a victory, then who are we to complain?”

“Oh, no, we can’t complain at all!” Dobbs said aloud. Several of the technicians looked up as the bottle was passed around. “It’s only that it’s our five billion-dollar module that’s riding on this!”

One of the technicians stepped back from the bunch, sloshing a little champagne from his Dixie cup. “If you don’t like it,” he said with a smile, in thickly accented English, “get a horse!”

“Clay,” Crespin said, no longer dropping his voice, “please remember who taught NASA a few things about getting rockets off the ground. If you’ve never seen anything like this at the Cape, just stop and ask yourself why.”

The technicians all stepped back from each other, raised their cups of champagne—first to each other, then to the Ariane 5—and said, “
Santé
.” Dobbs watched them, then after casting a baleful glance at Crespin, marched over to the technicians. He took the bottle from their hands and raised it toward the spacecraft, which smoked and wheezed on its railed launch platform. “
Santé
,” he said, then added, “
Vaya con Dios
.” When the French and Germans looked at him in confusion, he solemnly affixed, “Rise, you bastard.” The technicians laughed, Dobbs and Crespin traded mutually hostile looks, and they drank. Dobbs felt less overheated after that.

“
Neuf
…
huit
…
sept
…
six
…
cinq
…”

Dark black smoke tinted with the colors of the rising South American sun billowed from the base of the rocket; the image was transmitted onto the massive screen, with the colorful, digitally reproduced surreality of a high-tech dream. Dobbs never got used to the sight; he felt a lump in his throat.

“
Quatre
…
trois
…
deux
…
un
…”

The four main engines and the two strap-on boosters fired at once, creating an orchestrated blast of light and thunder which caused him to wince and—imagined or real, he couldn’t tell—the floor beneath his feet to tremble. “
Lancez
,” the Launch Control Supervisor intoned, almost unnecessarily, as the Ariane 5 broke loose from its launch platform and sprinted toward the deep blue sky.

The roar of the liftoff was carried into the launch center over the PA system, although dampened by the hand of a mindful technician who made sure it didn’t drown out the overlapping conversations in the room. On the giant TV screen overhead, the camera was tilted back to scan the rocket as it beelined toward space; already it was becoming not much more than a hexagonal dot surrounded by a white-hot corona at the head of a billowing contrail. In the observation booth, Dobbs could see the launch technicians as they huddled over their control stations, peering carefully at the readouts on dials and computer screens. By any standard, it was a good launch. European efficiency, he thought. Good old German rocketry know-how. Oberth and Von Braun and the rest of the original Peenemunde scientists began the tradition years ago, and their descendants—in spirit, if not by bloodline—carry it on today. He found himself grinning. By Volkswagen to the stars, he thought.

A hand clapped his shoulder suddenly. “Well, Clay,” Kenneth Crespin said. “It looks like your ‘J. Edgar Hoover’ satellite is on its way at last, eh?”

Dobbs at once soured. Jerk. “Spare me,” he replied. “I’m only enjoying the launch.”

Crespin shrugged. “I would think that after having watched a couple of hundred launches you’d be bored with one more.”

Dobbs looked over his shoulder at Crespin. “Ken, only an idiot takes these things for granted. Ever since the
Challenger
accident, no one in the space business can afford to take a successful launch with men aboard as something which just comes naturally.”

Crespin snorted. “Son, you were born two years after that happened. I think you’re a little too young to have any lasting memories of that, don’t you think?”

“Didn’t Santayana say something about ignoring the lessons of history?” Dobbs replied.

“
Touché.
I hope this doesn’t mean you’re going to back out of your own trip up in a few weeks.”

Dobbs said nothing, but stood up and stretched. Glancing at the imaging screen on the wall overhead, he saw that the Ariane had jettisoned its strap-on boosters and had gone transonic over the Atlantic just above the equator. The digital countdown clock was counting down the seconds to first-stage separation. “I’d love to,” he said. “Would you mind writing them a note and telling them that I’m too sick to come out and play?”

“Yes.”

“I kind of thought so. See if I’ll do anything nice for you again.”

“You know the reasons. We need to have the best person available up there to give this thing its final systems check and bring it on line. Obviously, the principal designer is that person, when he’s available.” Crespin shook his head as he stood up and put his hands on the back of his chair, leaning on them. “I don’t see what you’re so frightened about,” he said. “Space travel was relatively safe even before the
Challenger.
It’s become radically safer since then. There’s hundreds of people living in space today because of the advances made in space engineering. Hell, it’s
your
profession,
you
of all people should know that.”

Dobbs didn’t reply. The first stage had separated, and the countdown clock was recycling for the second-stage burnout and jettison. Judging from the calm on the launch-center floor, all was going just as planned. “It’s not a matter of fear,” he said firmly.

“Then what is it?”

“I just don’t want to be the one who turns the key and starts this thing up. Perhaps you find that paradoxical coming from the person who designed Big Ear, but I’d just as soon let someone else do the dirty work.” He managed a quick smile. “I’d rather be at my workbench, figuring out an electronic countermeasure to the Ear. I’m sure that once the system’s existence becomes public, some bright person will design…” He stopped, and laughed. “An Ear plug,” he added.

Dobbs looked at Crespin and noticed the frown on the older man’s face. “Don’t worry, Ken. I’m not about to call the
Times
or the
Washington Post
to leak the story. If there’s going to be a security risk anywhere, it won’t be me. I’m not going to risk a prison term only for the sake of soothing a guilty conscience.”