Powersat (The Grand Tour) (10 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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A
s he flew the butter-yellow Beech Staggerwing into the old Hobby Airport, Dan thought that Houston’s sprawl of high-rise towers looked like some Hollywood designer’s concept of what “the city of the future” should look like. All glass and steel, one building gaudier than the next.
Adair had offered to pilot the plane but Dan told him to stay with the FAA team investigating the accident. He flew to Houston on his own in the company’s little “puddle jumper,” a venerable Staggerwing biplane. It was slow and noisy, and it vibrated like a kitchen Cuisinart, but Dan loved the old beauty, loved her graceful lines and her faithful reliability. He and Tenny had personally rebuilt it, and he cherished every bump and rattle as he lined up the biplane for final approach, bouncing around in the jet wash of the Boeing 737 touching down ahead of him.
Garrison had a limousine waiting for him on the ramp as Dan taxied to a parking slot. He grabbed his summerweight jacket and stepped down from the plane. The African-American chauffeur, standing next to the limo in the soggy heat, was in black livery; Dan felt sorry for him. As he walked to the limousine the chauffeur opened the back door for him. Dan noticed that the motor was running and the air-conditioning was on full blast. He didn’t have the heart to tell the guy to turn it down a notch or two.
Garrison’s office tower was also cooled enough to raise goosebumps. Dan was met at the lobby reception desk by a sleek, long-legged brunette with a warm smile and sexy eyes. She led him to an elevator marked PRIVATE, which whisked the two of them nonstop to the top floor of the skyscraper.
When the elevator doors opened, Dan saw that the whole penthouse floor was one single expanse of lush greenery. “Looks like Jurassic Park,” he blurted. The brunette’s smile turned a little brittle. “Mr. Garrison loves nature,” she murmured.
Nature, Dan thought as he followed his escort past trays of colorful flowers and huge tubs that contained real trees. The place smelled like a garden, even down to the scent of freshcut grass, but he wondered if it was real or piped in with the cooled air that sighed through vents in the green-painted pipes twined overhead. The ceiling was mostly glass, deeply tinted to keep the place from turning into a solar oven. Garrison’s turned the top floor of this high-rise into a by-damn greenhouse, Dan saw. He probably thinks of himself as an ecologist while his riggers are out digging up half the world to find more oil.
Through an archway of carefully pruned greenery they walked, past a pair of desks flanking their green-carpeted path, each occupied by another sleek-looking young woman. Garrison likes his scenery, Dan thought. Or maybe he has ’em here to impress visitors.
They went around a seven-foot-high hedge and there was Wendell T. Garrison himself, sitting in his powered wheelchair behind a desk big enough to land a helicopter on.
Garrison was peering intently into a slim display screen as Dan and his escort Came into his view. He looked up and the screen slowly folded itself into the top of his massive desk.
“Dan Randolph,” Garrison croaked, his weathered face breaking into a big welcoming smile. He backed the chair away from the desk and drove around it toward Dan.
“Sorry I can’t stand up,” he said, extending his hand. Dan took it in his own. Garrison’s hand felt cool and dry, reminding Dan of a snake’s skin.
“C’mon over here,” the old man said, driving off toward a corner where a small, round table stood next to windows that ran from floor to ceiling. Dan could see cars crawling along the city streets far, far below. It’s almost like being in orbit, he thought.
“You can go now, sugar,” Garrison said to Dan’s escort. “If I want anything
I’ll
call.”
Despite the lush garden and the hothouse atmosphere, the huge room was still cool enough for Dan to keep his jacket on. Garrison wore a gray business suit, his shirt collar unbuttoned and a bolo tie hanging loosely down his shirt front, which was as wrinkled as his wizened face. Dan couldn’t make out the greenish gray stone in the bolo, although its setting was clearly silver.
“You want anything? Drink? Lunch?”
“No thanks,” said Dan as he sat next to the old man.
“Okay, then let’s get right to business.”
“Suits me fine.”
“You need a cash influx. I’m willin’ to put a bill or so into your company. How much of a percentage can I buy?”
Dan was a little taken aback by his bluntness, but decided that he liked the direct approach.
“Mr. Garrison, I don’t want to sell any part of Astro Corporation to anybody. I want to keep control of my company.”
“Of course, of course. But what you want doesn’t jibe with your financial situation, now does it?”
“I’d be glad to borrow a billion from you,” Dan said.
“At today’s interest rates?”
“LIBOR plus one percent.”
“The Brit bankers’ rate? How about prime from the good old U.S.A.? Plus two.”
“The London interbank rate suits me better.”
Garrison laughed, a wheezing cackle. “Well, you got balls, I’ll say that much for you.”
Smiling back at the old man, Dan replied, “And I don’t intend to give ’em away.”
Garrison nodded. “Can’t say I blame you. How’d you like
that cutie that brought you up here, eh? I can fix you up with her for dinner tonight.”
“I’ll be going back to Matagorda tonight.”
“H’mp.”
“About that loan …”
“Not interested in a loan, son. If I put out money for you I expect a share of your company. That’s reasonable and fair.”
Dan nodded; he had to admit Garrison was right.
“Who owns Astro now?”
From the look in the old man’s flinty eyes, Dan figured he already knew such details. “I do,” he answered. “Most of the shares. Sunk every penny I ever saw into it.”
“Uh-huh. And who else?”
“A couple of banks. A lot of smaller investors. My employees own a chunk.”
Garrison scratched at his chin. “They own how much, fifteen percent?”
Right on the nose, Dan thought. “Just about fifteen, yes.”
“Okay, I’ll buy fifteen percent. You can take it out of your own shares. I’ll pay one point five billion. That ought to raise the value of your stock quite a bit.”
“I’d rather have a loan.”
Garrison shook his head.
“Yamagata’s already offered me a loan.”
The old man’s eyes snapped. “You don’t want to be taking money from the Japs, son. They’re out to cut your throat.”
Dan admitted, “Yamagata wasn’t happy when I started the project. He sees it as competition for his own interests.”
Waggling a bony finger under Dan’s nose, Garrison said, “If you’re worried about somebody musclin’ you out of your company, worry about the Japs. Not me.”
The two men talked for more than an hour without coming to an agreement. Dan promised to think about Garrison’s offer of buying into Astro Corporation. “I’ll talk to some of my key board members about it,” he said.
“You do that,” said Garrison. “And remember, the clock’s ticking. You’re lookin’ at the edge of a cliff, son.”
“Don’t I know it,” Dan said.
Once Dan left, escorted again by the brunette, Garrison muttered to himself, “Got to turn up the screws on that boy. He’s too damn stubborn for his own good.”
L
ater that afternoon, Joe Tenny hustled along the catwalk from his office to Dan’s. He burst through the door to the outer office, startling Dan’s executive assistant.
“Gotta see the boss,” Tenny said.
April quickly regained her poise. “He’s in Houston, seeing Mr. Garrison.”
“When’s he due back?”
She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Later tonight.”
“Get him on his cell phone, willya?” Tenny said as he strode into Dan’s private office. For a moment April looked as if she wanted to stop him, but instead she turned to her desktop computer and pecked out a command.
Tenny slid into Dan’s desk chair. The display screen lit up to show Dan’s face. Before Tenny could speak a word, Dan’s image said, “I’m not available at the moment. Leave a message and a number where I can get back to you.”
Fuming impatiently, Tenny said into the screen, “Boss, I think I got an angle on who’s the skunk in the woodworks. I tracked down the people who had access to the command codes
and
the ground track. Call me on my cell right away.”
His message finished, Tenny jumped up from the chair and headed out of the office. As he breezed past April once again, he said, “If Dan calls in, transfer it to my cell phone. Top priority.”
“Yes, Dr. Tenny,” April said, in a hushed voice. Tenny always rattled her, and this day was worse than any previous.
 
 
N
ine o‘clock and still no word from Dan, Tenny groused to himself as he paced the catwalk around the hangar. He glanced over the railing at the wreckage sprawled across the hangar’s concrete floor. He had called Dan four times since he’d barged into the boss’s office earlier in the afternoon; all he’d gotten was that shit-brained automatic message. What good is having a friggin’ cell phone if you keep it turned off all the time?
All right, Tenny admitted to himself, Dan wouldn’t want the phone bothering him while he’s meeting with Garrison. But he oughtta be flying back by now. He’s probably still got the friggin’ phone off while he’s flying the Staggerwing. Tough enough flying that clunker at night without phone calls interrupting your concentration, he reluctantly acknowledged.
I can’t just stand around here waiting! Tenny complained silently. He yanked his own cell phone out of his shirt pocket to make sure it was on and functioning. Okay, he thought as he stuffed it back into his pocket, no sense sitting here with my thumbs up my butt. He started down the steel steps, his boots clattering, echoing in the darkened hangar.
At the bottom he stopped and stared out at the wreckage of the spaceplane. Dirty, shit-eating sonsofbitches, he growled inwardly. They did this deliberately. They destroyed the plane and killed Hannah. Deliberately. In cold blood. Must have taken ‘em months to plan it out and get everything set. Friggin’ murderers.
Striding toward his shiny black, chrome-trimmed Silverado parked outside the hangar, Tenny pulled the phone out of his pocket again and pecked out the number for the motel where Passeau was staying. An automated answering voice asked him for the name of the guest he was trying to reach.
“Passeau,” Tenny snapped. Then he spelled it.
The phone beeped four times. Five.
“The person you are trying to reach is not answering the phone. If you would like to leave a voice mail message, press one.”
Tenny thumbed the keypad. When the automated voice gave him the cue, he said, “Claude, it’s Joe Tenny. I’ve got proof that the bird was sabotaged and I know who did it. Call me as soon as you get this message.”
Fuming about people who didn’t answer their goddamned phones, Tenny opened the door to his Silverado and climbed up into the driver’s seat. He turned on the ignition and the engine growled to life. Then he saw the orange warning on the dashboard fuel gauge.
Near empty? he asked himself. Couldn’t be; I filled the tank yesterday and I haven’t gone anywhere except from here to home and back.
Nettled, worried that the hydrogen tank might be leaking, he put the truck in gear and headed through the night for the hydrogen storage facility on the other end of the airstrip. The Astro base was dark, except for pale lamps spaced along the roadways that connected the various buildings. Glancing out his side window, Tenny saw that the clouds that had been piling up since late afternoon had blotted out the stars. Dan’s gonna have to land at the commercial airport, he thought. It’s gonna be pouring rain here pretty soon.
The damn fuel tank shouldn’t be leaking, he fumed as he drove across the base. The hydrogen bonds to the metal chips in the tank, nice and solid. Maybe some of it baked out of the chips, though; the pickup’s been sitting out in the sun all day. Hydrogen gas leaks out the tank’s cap, he knew. Sneaky stuff in its gaseous phase; seeps through almost any kind of seal.
He shrugged. No real danger. Hydrogen gas just floats up into the air, doesn’t drip and spread and make puddles like gasoline would. Still, Dan insisted that the hydrogen facility had to be stuck out in the middle of noplace. Worried it might blow up like the old
Hindenburg.
No matter how I tell him the stuff is safe, he still worries about hydrogen. Him and everybody else. NASA’s been using liquid hydrogen for rocket engines for more’n fifty friggin’ years and people are still scared of the stuff.
Shaking his head at human obstinacy, Tenny pulled to a
stop at the wire fence that surrounded the hydrogen facility. In the darkness he groped in the glove compartment for the automatic door opener, clicked it once, and the gate rattled open on its metal wheels. He drove in, passed the low building that housed the electrolysis equipment that separated water into hydrogen and oxygen, and pulled up next to the huge spherical hydrogen tank. Bigger than a two-story house, the tank dwarfed Tenny’s Silverado. Both it and the smaller oxygen tank next to it had enormous NO SMOKING signs painted across their curving flanks in Day-Glo red.
Tenny climbed down from the truck, grumbling to himself that he would have to check the fuel tank in the morning. Not at the house, though, he decided. I’ll drive back out here and park it in the far corner of the parking lot. Maybe I’ll have to build a carport to protect the truck from the sun.
“Who’s there?”
Tenny jerked with surprise at the sound of a man’s voice. Then he saw one of the uniformed security guards walking up to him. Big guy. His shirt stretched, too small for his muscular frame.
“It’s okay,” he told the rent-a-cop, fishing his ID badge from his shirt pocket. “I work here.”
The guard flashed his light on the card, then into Tenny’s face. Tenny squinted, frowned.
“Okay, Mr. Tenny. Just doing my job.”
“Yeah, fine, but get the light outta my eyes.”
“Yessir.” The light winked out.
Blinking, waiting for his night vision to return, Tenny stepped around his pickup to find the fuel hose. The big hydrogen tank held liquefied hydrogen, cooled to more than four hundred degrees below zero. To power his truck, Tenny had built a small assembly that tapped liquid hydrogen from the tank, allowed it to warm to a gas, and then pumped the gas into his pickup’s tank.
“I didn’t know you guys were patrolling out here,” Tenny said, as he peered at the dimly lit gauges in the darkness.
“The boss thought we out to check the facility every shift, since the accident,” said the guard.
Overreacting, Tenny thought Scared of hydrogen. Shit, this facility’s as safe as the file cabinets in Dan’s office.
He found the fuel hose as his eyes readjusted to the darkness of the cloudy night. As he turned back to his truck, the guard smashed the butt of his pistol into Tenny’s head, knocking him unconscious. He sprawled on the ground, the hose still gripped in his right hand.
Swiftly, the guard unlatched the safety valve on the hose. Invisible, odorless hydrogen gas began pouring out of it. The guard could hear the pump chugging behind him. He ran out to the wire fence at the hydrogen facility’s perimeter, dashed through the gate and raced to his own car, parked up the road. Ducking in behind the steering wheel, he popped the glove compartment and pulled out a small flat metal box. Inside it was a length of ordinary white string that smelled sharply of the oil it had been soaked in.
For a moment he hesitated. He clicked the box closed again and started his car’s engine. He wanted to be moving away when the shit hit the fan. He jumped out of the car, uncoiling the oil-soaked string as he ran back to Tenny’s Silverado. The engineer was still facedown, moaning, his legs scrabbling feebly. The man pushed one end of the string into the still-hissing hydrogen hose, then uncoiled the string to its full length and lit its other end. He sprinted back to his car, slammed it into gear, and peeled away with a screech of rubber on the tarred roadway.
The hydrogen facility blew up in a massive red fireball, hotter than the pits of hell. The roar of the blast shook the guard’s car so badly he nearly drove off the road. As the fireball soared into the night sky, turning the clouds coppery red, the guard drove off and headed for Houston, where his money was waiting for him.

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