The Inner Circle (18 page)

"She withdrew the few thousand dollars she had left and ended up renting a small apartment, where she's been living ever since. She works at this wretched little diner now, and does not seem to be interested with much in life. I spoke to her, without telling her who I was or mentioning anything about the comet obviously, and it seemed like she would not have any recent interest or knowledge about what her brother and his partner found. She seemed more concerned with being miserable and waiting for her life to end."

"How couldn't she be miserable?" the president asked. "What a life. Oh well, you have anything else?"

"No, that's about it for now. I'm about to go catch a plane back to D.C. Have you heard from anyone else?"

"Yes, Armour called and said he's found the perfect candidate for the probe mission. He's going to start recruiting today."

"That was quick," Mansfield said. "I hope he found someone reliable. Whoever he chooses could very well end up being the most important person in the history of our world."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Why couldn't today be cloudy? Does this sun always have to beat down so darn bright and hot?

Neil Peterson parked his beat-up Camaro in the proper lot and made the long walk across the scorching grounds of the NASA pilot testing and simulation facility. The incessant heat was just about the worst thing for his head and stomach, both of which felt awful from the previous night's drinking binge. With every shallow breath he took, the hot air burned his lungs, leaving Neil feeling faint and light-headed. At least when he made it to the hangar the temperature would drop down to ninety.

Although Neil was only thirty-two years old, he looked closer to forty-two and felt more like fifty-two. He still had a resemblance to the good-looking man he had been only a few years back, before the alcohol began to take a more prominent role in his life.

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At one time in his life, Neil felt like he was on top of the world. He'd been one of NASA's top astronaut-trainees, had the respect of every person he worked with, and had a beautiful wife and precious young daughter. Neil was even in line to be part of the next group of astronauts to travel to the famed International Space Station. At the time, he did not think there was anything else in the world he could have possibly wanted, as his life was the definition of the 'American Dream.' That was until a new project came along at work.

Five years earlier, a group of NASA engineers began secretly hatching a proposal that was supposed to revolutionize the entire space program, as well as overhaul the whole thought of what an astronomer's work in space was supposed to be like. The group needed an astronaut's opinion and input on their planning and was very excited when they were able to persuade Neil to join them. He was the hottest young astronaut at NASA and his inclusion on their project added more validity to the goals they were trying to accomplish.

For Neil, leaving his normal post at NASA to join this group was an excruciatingly difficult decision to make. In hindsight, it was the beginning of the end for his career, his dream and his family. But at the time – especially after hearing the planned outcome of the group's project – Neil could not pass up the incredible opportunity. After all, if everything worked out the way it was supposed to, Neil would have become the most famous astronaut of all time.

Things slowly began to fall apart around Neil the next few years, but he stuck to his guns with the thought that this project would one day become among the world's greatest accomplishments. If only he had recognized all of the bad omens that would eventually doom everything...

Less than two months after Neil took his name off of the astronaut-in-waiting list, the team he’d trained with for years finally got their call to go to the space station. Had Neil waited to join the secret project group two months later than he did, he would have finally accomplished his life-long dream of traveling to space. Watching his old team succeed in their mission was bittersweet for him, but Neil still believed that his career move had been the correct one. Since he'd already waited this long to travel into space, prolonging the trip by a few years to accomplish something truly incredible – rather than a routine space station visit – was a trade Neil was willing to make.

Besides, he’d been so engrossed with his recent work that he did not have much time to dwell on missing the mission. Throughout his entire career with the Air Force and then NASA, Neil had considered himself strictly a 'fly-boy.' Flying was the only thing he'd ever considered important and he was always sure to leave the shuttle planning and designing to the experts. Once he started working with the secret project group, though, Neil became immersed in learning about the development and engineering aspects of designing spacecraft.

Why just fly something that someone else designs when I can help create the kind of craft that would be ideal for space?

Neil spent long hours at work, attempting to learn as much as he could, trying to help the engineers design the perfect spacecraft for the mission they had planned. For once in his life, Neil felt like he was actually creating something important. Yet when he told his wife this after she began complaining that Neil was ignoring his family, she did not understand the career satisfaction he was finally beginning to feel.

'You should be happy that you have created something important at home; a family, a bond with your wife, your daughter. These things should be most important to you,' she would argue. Neil could not understand why his wife would not just feel happy for him instead of always nagging about how her life was so miserable. A marital rift steadily began to pull them further and further apart, but Neil was sure that once he was able to tell her and the world about his project, all of the troubles at home would be forgiven and forgotten.

The secret group originally started off at nine members, with Neil making ten. By the end of the first year, that number dwindled to seven. After the second year, seven became four. The members dropped out for various reasons, ranging from simple creative differences to all-out disputes about the direction of the project. NASA originally gave this secret group high priority and pick of the engineering-specialists litter, but after it became apparent that the main objective of the project would have a hard time being completed, the administration began to reassign some of group's best minds.

When the allotted 30-month time period came to an end, Neil and the three remaining group members presented all of their work to a five-member board of NASA's highest officials. Neil kept his nervous feelings of failure deep in his sub-conscious, not even allowing himself the thought that their proposal to NASA would be anything less than a rousing success. Neil and his three partners were all very passionate in their presentation, having worked so hard and put in so much time for a mission that could have been 'monumental.' The NASA board, led by Chief James Armour, interpreted their passion for desperation though and while they were pleased with the results of the group's work, they decided to deny moving forward on this project.

Neil felt stunned by the rejection, but his three fellow coworkers seemed like they knew this decision was inevitable. With the exception of Neil, the rest of the group knew they would have no trouble finding other projects to work on with NASA. Their engineering expertise could be applied to much of the other on-going NASA research, and the secret group disbanded as though the previous few years had meant nothing.

Neil did not have the same luck with finding new work that his fellow group members did. He was the most disappointed of the group by the rejection, probably because he had the most to lose. He was supposed to be the centerpiece of the project, as the group's success would have instantly made him one of the biggest celebrities in the world. He lost all of this in the matter of one meeting and was relegated back to the astronaut-waiting list.

Or so he’d hoped.

When he reapplied to get back on the list for space-travel, he found that a surge of incoming astronaut-trainees had caused the temporary suspension of new additions to the list. At the time he took his name off the list, Neil Peterson seemed destined to succeed in space with the hope that he’d be re-assigned for many missions to follow. Now, his imminent success was a thing of the past, forgotten because of his failure after two and a half years spent on another project. He’d missed too much training to even reeieve a special exemption onto the bottom of the list, which would have allowed him the possibility of a space mission in about five or six years.

Astronauts not on the list were also not allowed to train, which meant Neil's future with NASA was put in serious jeopardy. If all a man knew how to be was an astronaut, then there wasn’t much future with NASA if he could not even get on the astronaut list. Most other people in Neil's situation would have left for a job in the Air Force or other piloting professions, but Neil could not bring himself to give up on his dream.

After all, he had been named after the most famous astronaut to ever live.

Much to the chagrin of his wife – who loved to point out that there were plenty of “good paying jobs” for someone with his flying skill – Neil accepted a job with NASA as a test pilot for simulation exercises. It was a job that – previous to joining the secret group – Neil and many of his fellow astronauts would have scoffed at taking. But it was the only way Neil could stay close enough to NASA so his dream would stay alive, even if it was on life-support. The simulation group used computers to generate all different scenarios for the different shuttle designs that might one day fly in space. Neil’s job was to sit inside a replica module of the different shuttles and go through the same routines that his fellow astronauts would during a space mission. Computers would generate all sorts of potential mishaps that could occur – no matter how distant a chance they would happen – and Neil would try to figure out the problem.

Neil worked closely with the 'techies' – the people who designed the computer simulations – and together, they mapped out the best list of procedures to deal with any situation. The work was not very far off from some of the other training techniques Neil had gone through earlier in his astronaut career, but the situations he had to deal with now were ludicrous compared to his former training. None of the problems they tried to solve seemed realistic to Neil and he usually felt like he was preparing more for a bad science-fiction movie than an actual space-disaster problem.

Neil's discontent at work quickly spread to his home life. The relationship problems with his wife escalated to the point where the two – when not fighting – only spoke when they had to. Neil had known his marriage was in serious risk, yet instead of trying to fix things, he chose to ignore them. His professional life was bad enough; he did not want the extra hassle of worrying about marital woes. His wife was not as eager to forget about their problems, though, and she was sure to remind him of them at every possible moment.

Neil knew that turning to alcohol was the worst possible thing he could do, but it was the only thing that did not made him feel better. He began drinking lightly – a few beers here and there, an occasional six pack in one night. The booze helped to make his life more bearable and he even got along with his wife and daughter better for the first month. But it didn't take long before his alcohol intake increased, which started to create many more problems than it helped to solve.

Before long, Neil even began to find it difficult to take pleasure in just being around his daughter, Emily. Neil's wife had known that their marriage was not going to work, but she had stayed with him for quite a while only because Neil seemed to adore his daughter so much. On her fifth birthday, Neil's wife planned a big birthday party, full of screaming little kids and balloons. Neil's wife knew it was going to be a hassle, but with Neil's help, she knew they would give Emily the best birthday party they could afford.

After another long, tedious day of work, Neil had dreaded going home to a house full of screaming little brats. He stopped off at the local bar for a beer, if only to help take the edge off the chore that was soon to come. One beer turned into two, two into three, and three into half a bottle of whiskey. When he finally staggered home, the party – as well as his marriage – had ended three hours earlier. A fight between Neil and his wife resulted in Neil's greatest moment of weakness, which resulted in his wife calling the police on him. Neil's slurred apology to his wife and daughter did nothing to help and after the cops arrested him and he spent a night in jail, he came home to find that his family moved out the next morning. Neil had felt pretty confident that his two girls would come back, but then his wife accepted a new job and moved across the country. That was three years earlier and with the exception of a few pictures and random telephone calls to Emily, Neil's only companion was alcohol.

A strong man would have quit drinking, gotten his life back under control and tried to at least arrange a deal with his ex-wife to see his daughter. Neil was five years removed from the strong man he once was, though, and he instead resorted to the lonely life of an alcoholic. He was able to hide his drinking problem from NASA for the most part, even though there had been a few instances too many when he showed up to work either slightly drunk or very hung over. Because he was such a skilled test pilot and was willing to take a job that nobody else with his credentials would, his mistakes and poor lifestyle had been overlooked.