Chapter 22: Kings of the High Frontier



CHAPTER 22
It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to
comply with all the overt orders of the government.
-- James Jesus Angleton
CIA counter-intelligence chief

3 February
"Half a billion bucks is nothing to sneeze at."
Marcus Grant smiled wanly at Donahue. "I intend us to beat everyone else," he said, "but I
don't think we'll need the prize. First, we won't be returning to Earth to claim it, and, second,
our immediate action upon achieving orbit will be to broadcast a declaration of
independence."
"Politics?" Chad Haley leaned in the doorway of Grant's office. "You?"
Grant swiveled in his chair to glance at the newcomer. Haley wore a light tropical outfit that
contrasted sharply with the rainfall hammering the Long Beach harbor area. Strapped to his
overnight bag, though, was a telltale dripping umbrella.
"It just so happens," Grant said, "that I was quite political in my youth. Anti-political, you
might say. I think I can get it up for a blistering attack on UNITO. How was Uganda?"
"I spent a few weeks there yesterday." Haley flopped down in an empty chair, his face a
mask of exhaustion. "Speaking of politics, I think the situation is too unstable even for us.
There were two gun battles near the airport the one day I was there. Six Ruwenzori protesters
dead. Constant announcements from the government that there was no cause for alarm. I
couldn't even sign onto The Net over there. However..." He pulled a handful of flyers from his
overnight bag and tossed them on Grant's desk. "There aren't a lot of choices when it comes to
equatorial launch sites, especially with uninhabited land or ocean to the east. In the Celebes
Sea, you've got Malaysia, Indonesia and such. Borneo would be a good location, as would
Celebes or New Guinea; over seven thousand of the smaller islands are uninhabited. Biggest
problem is that it's under fairly constant satellite observation, due to intense shipping."
"Heck, the whole planet's under surveillance," Grant said. "That shouldn't stop us."
"It rains a lot there, too, which limits launch opportunities. In South America, you just have
Brazil. Lots and lots of Brazil. Macapa's a coastal city at the mouth of the Amazon. Good
political stability, but maybe too close and cozy with the U.S. That leaves the east coast of
Africa. Somalia, to be precise. Kismayu."
"Kiss your what?"
Haley shook his head. The long hours were getting to all of them. "It's a port town smack
dab on the equator, give or take a quarter degree. Climate is desert-like, with occasional
monsoons."
"Political stability?" Grant asked.
Donahue sighed. "Rotten. Tribal warfare disguised as civil unrest. Somalis versus Bantus.
You remember the U.S. was involved a few years back. Dead soldiers dragged around. It's
quieter now, but not what I'd call placid."
"Those are our choices?"
"If you want an equatorial orbit. If you decide otherwise, there's--"
"No," Grant said with an emphatic finger jab at the desk. "This station, this first station, has
to be in an equatorial orbit. I intend to use it as a way station for geosynchronous rendezvous."
He let go a disgusted snort. "Let me think about it. Have you finalized the station blueprints
yet?"
Haley shook his head. "Still checking out contractors to do the combustion chambers. We
need over eleven thousand of them. And we were going to go to Mojave and check out a
composite fabricator for the propellant tanks."
Grant's voice brightened. "Mojave Airport?"
Donahue nodded, smiling. "Across the field from Laurence Poubelle and the
Dædalus
Project."
A wide grin spread across Grant's face. "When's their gift shop open?"
* * *
The rainstorm drenched the desert, too. Grant maneuvered the luxurious Jeep El Capitan
through and around sheets of water spilling across Highway 14.
Haley kept his gaze glued to the Jeep's navigation terminal, reading weather information
and simultaneously watching a real-time map of the storm enshrouding them. "Flood watch for
the area," he muttered, "but no flood warnings yet.
"We're almost there," Grant said, pointing to a faded sign.
Donahue peered out at the sign. On it was painted a bizarre-looking white aircraft with
long, thin wings, an engine pod with both pusher and tractor propellers, and twin fuel pods
parallel to the cockpit. "Hey! Did you know that this is where Voyager flew out of?"
Grant nodded. "And a few miles down Highway Fifty-Eight is Edwards Air Force Base,
where the shuttle lands sometimes."
"There!" Donahue pointed at a small sign indicating the way to the airport. Grant executed
a skidding turn that sent a sheet of water splashing against the side of a small diner. A few lefts
and rights later, the Jeep slid to a halt behind a series of hangars.
After a few moments struggling into rain gear, the trio popped open umbrellas outside the
doors and galoshed into muddy puddles, splashing their way toward the Dædalus
Project
building. Haley and Donahue headed for the office and Grant for the hangar.
The office was a wonderworld of merchandising: hats, shirts, mugs, keychains, model kits,
pamphlets, pens, lunch boxes, postcards, and much more lined the walls and the
point-of-purchase displays. The two visitors stood in the entrance shaking off the water and
collapsing their umbrellas before venturing forth into the souvenir Mecca.
"Not too crowded today, is it?" Donahue fingered the black corduroy cap with the
Dædalus
patch.
The lady behind the counter smiled. She was plump and matronly, though her face bespoke
too many days in the searing desert sun. "Some people just don't like weather."
Joscelyn slipped the cap over her auburn hair. "How do I look?"
Haley laughed. "Like a wet gas station attendant."
She turned to the woman. "I'll take it."
"Poubelle's really paying for the rocket with all this?" Chad picked up a photo book of the
progress so far on the project, along with artists' conceptions of the flight itself.
"Souvenirs and donations." The cashier pointed to a mayonnaise jar by the cash register,
stuffed with coins and currency.
Haley and Donahue glanced at each other, then broke out into laughter, both imagining what
souvenirs from their own scheme would look like.
In the hangar, meanwhile, Grant observed the dozen or so workers laboring tirelessly on
Nomad. His gaze darted everywhere, absorbing details, analyzing strengths, searching
for deficiencies. This is the market at work, he thought. Competition fueled by cooperation,
driven by a vision. No need to pay them hush money, either.
"Beautiful sight," a voice behind him said.
He turned to face Larry Poubelle, dressed in a glistening wet black leather trenchcoat and
carrying a thin Zero-Halliburton aluminum case. A worker ran up to him; he handed the case to
him and said, "Gyros and accelerometers. Give them to Pierce."
"Mr. Poubelle." The visitor extended his hand. "Marcus Grant."
Poubelle reached out merrily, then hesitated upon hearing the name. "The Marcus
Grant?"
Grant smiled. "I've heard that often enough that I'm going to make it my first name."
Poubelle shook his hand anyway, saying, "I don't believe everything I read in the papers.
Considering how they treat me."
"Believe half of it." He reacted only slightly to the grip of the mechanical hand. Upon
release, he pointed toward the skeletal aircraft. "You know, the X-15 A-2's drop tanks added a
lot of weight and drag for only two more Mach numbers. And the proposal to make it orbital by
hitching it to a Navaho booster included the pilot ditching the aircraft to parachute back to
Earth."
It was Poubelle's turn to smile at the man. "For a billionaire, you seem to have done your
homework."
Grant ran a hand though his grey hair. "We're more or less contemporaries. The original
program held my interest as... a teenager."
"What brings you out here?" Poubelle asked. "Rotten weather for limos."
"Business," he said in the politesse of the wealthy that implied it was none of Poubelle's
damned business and he was better off inquiring no further. "This part of it is the pleasure I try
to mix in whenever possible."
"Would you like the four-bit tour?"
"No, thanks." Grant looked about. "I know you've got a deadline to meet." He paused,
then
looked Poubelle straight in the eye. "Do you think they'll just let you fly off out of their
reach?"
"What?" Poubelle stared at the man with a baffled look.
"You were a military man. How would they--"
"Oh, them. I don't worry about them. The three C's, you know: Cost, Competence, and
Conspiracy. Right now, they can't afford it, they probably can't hit an accelerating target over
the continent, and there are undoubtedly conflicting factions of the power elite whose divergent
interests would probably paralyze any response. Hell, you must have encountered such ruling
class intrigue, right?"
A thin smile distorted Grant's lips for a moment. "Spake as one billionaire to another."
Poubelle laughed like a banker in a melodrama. "Don't you hate inherited wealth?"
Grant nodded. "If you don't earn it yourself, you can't appre--"
"Gun!" someone cried.
Poubelle whipped about to see a woman in the hangar door pointing a revolver at him. He
cut to the side, covering his face with one arm, his heart with the other. She followed his motion
and commenced firing. The shots reverberated in the sheet-steel building as workers jumped
from Nomad and dove under desks and behind equipment.
Grant raced toward her and launched into a flying tackle just as her last round fired. They
slammed against the concrete together, her head hitting with a sickening crack. A brunette wig
flew from her scalp exposing matted, henna-orange hair beneath. Her face was lined like a map
of homelessness and misfortune. Blood trickled from her nostrils and ears.
The .38 caliber Colt Cobra skidded from her grip to lay a foot away from her. Grant
elbowed it farther away. "Don't touch it!" he shouted to a worker running toward him. "It's got
her prints on it."
A strange whirring sound approached him from behind. Pinning the assailant's unconscious
shoulders to the ground, Grant turned to see Poubelle approach, his right arm twitching in
spasmodic jerks. He fumbled with a pocket on the shirt sleeve; it tore away with the ripping
sound of Velcro to reveal an access hatch that he opened to press a finger inside. The arm
suddenly froze as if it had been placed in a cast.
"Took a slug in the servos," he muttered, then hollered over his other shoulder, "Antonio!
Bring my other arm! It's behind my desk!" He bent over Grant and the woman.
"Who is she?" Grant asked.
"You tell me," he said, looking curiously at his rescuer.
* * *
The local constabulary and paramedics eventually arrived to cart the groggy woman away.
The rain, at least, had let up. None of the cops lifted an eyebrow of recognition when Grant
reluctantly identified himself for their reports. He was mostly known to a higher level of law
enforcement than small-town flatfeet.
When the assailant's identity had been sufficiently established, along with it came her
disoriented attempt to explain a motive. Joseph Lester and Hillary Kaye were there to tape his
response.
"Have you ever heard of Lana Lane before?" Lester asked, turning the microphone toward
Poubelle, who sat at his desk on which lay his ruined arm, two bullet holes punched in it, a
golden puddle of hydraulic fluid staining the newspaper beneath it.
"Never. And her claim that she had lost some big investment in American Atomic is equally
untenable. My people are checking into her claims, but if she has any beef, it ought to be with
her stockbroker, not with me." He pulled a cigar from his pocket humidor and rolled it in his
living fingers.
"Do you find it suspicious that such an assault would take place in the middle of a winter
storm out in the Mojave desert just days after you announce a half-billion-dollar Great Space
Race?"
Poubelle glowered at Lester as if he had been asked what color underwear he was wearing.
"I don't want to speculate on anything that's even more far out than my offer." He suddenly
grinned as if a switch were thrown. "Why don't you ask me if I had it done as a publicity
stunt?"
While Lester wrapped up the interview, Poubelle noticed that Chemar had returned from her
daily rain-or-shine run to stare in alarm at the crime scene tape blocking the entrance. When she
saw Larry, a look of overwhelming relief enveloped her. She rushed over to embrace him,
staining his clothes with rainwater. Then she smiled up at him and said, "I'm gone an hour and
this is how you treat the crew?"
Poubelle nodded. "No one's hurt," he said, "though I think we may have to address the
security question."
"What did I tell you?" she said in a somber tone.
Gerry Cooper sloshed by to say that he had heard about the attack.
"Bad weather brings em out," Poubelle replied.
"It must do something," Cooper agreed. "I took a call this morning from General Davis of
the Air Force. They've agreed to let us conduct launch tests from Vandenberg."
Poubelle raised a wary eyebrow. "I'll pencil your name on the check," he said wryly, then
added, "Watch your back."
Cooper frowned, perplexed. "Thom Brodsky said the same thing. Don't you guys see that
they're finally coming around? That our arguments and examples are convincing them to loosen
up?"
"I see them trying to cover all bases." Poubelle flexed his spare arm.
"I know for a fact that there are people in the military and civilian space programs who
don't like the Interplanetary Treaty any more than we do."
The robotic arm whirred and slapped Cooper across the back to give him a comradely
squeeze. "Then maybe they'll all quit their jobs and join us, eh, Coop?"
5 February
Jon Franck and Samantha Madison, while commiserating with Reis yet another night in The
Heat Shield, both regretted the pilot's decision. As far as they knew, she quit the corps without
even consulting them. A chill permeated the Ablation Room as they discussed the future, an icy
atmosphere that distanced her from her closest friends.
Madison coolly suggested that Reis go to an airline. "You're attractive, you could always
get a good pr job."
Reis eyed the younger woman with sullen pain. "You could say my looks got me where I
am
today," she agreed. "Listen, I want to fly spacecraft." She felt miserable and wondered whether
she had made a truly idiotic decision. What did she know about spying, anyway?
"Not too late to learn Japanese," Franck said.
"Very funny."
"I'm serious. NipponÆro is just a few years away from their first crewed launch.
Forget
the pr potential, they might just offer you a chance to pilot the ship because of your
expertise."
"Maybe," she said. "But I'd prefer something that'll knock Kirk's ass onto concrete.
Something right under his nose." Her voice rose enough for other tables to hear. "I'd like to
blast off right out of the middle of Omaha or someplace on a pile of nuts and bolts that cost ten
bucks to build and show those bloated little empire-builders in management how a space
program ought to work!" There, she thought. That wasn't too hard. Just keep talking that way.
Subtle and indirect. She took another sip of her Jack Daniel's.
Franck entertained the idea seriously. "Well, there are private launch systems struggling for
a market. That media hog Poubelle is one of the least credible. It's all the regulations, though,
that keep them from making any headway. Who can afford to post a hundred million dollar
bond before each flight? Governments can -- they print the money, so it's just a bookkeeping
entry. Private companies, though, you're talking real money."
"And convincing the satellite industry," Samantha added. "They see the STS and EuroSpace
and won't invest in a new system until they see a prototype and no one can afford to build a
prototype without investment from industry."
Tammy slugged back her drink as if it were water cooling a fire and slammed the shot glass
down. "It's pointless." Her voice was slurred from the third drink. "There're too many little
petty cowards in NASA who'll sabotage anything that might threaten their damned funding!"
She
looked around her and loudly said, "Any one of you think you've got a future in Space? I mean
for more than a few days out of your entire lives?"
Samantha touched her arm. "Come on, Tammy. Sit down."
"Everyone talks about how we're like Christopher Columbus," Reis said, nearly in tears.
"Columbus didn't matter. Sooner or later someone else would have hit the coastline. The one's
who mattered were the Indians who showed up three hundred centuries before and actually
settled here! And Virginia Dare, first baby born here from English settlers."
Jon pulled her down into her seat. She stared mournfully at the tabletop. "We're just
tourists pretending we'll move there someday, but the boss won't let us transfer. He won't open
a branch office. 'Too expensive,' he says. 'No one out there.' Well, I say
'Build it and they will come!' "
Jon shook his head and stood to raise her up. "Let's take her home. When she starts quoting
inspirational sports stories, she's had it."
* * *
Milton read the flash report carefully. It described the pistol attack on Laurence Poubelle in
general terms, closing with the observation "investigators conclude that the assailant was a
disgruntled former investor in American Atomic with a history of mental illness. Suspect was
under the care of a psychiatrist and was being treated with fluoxytine hydrochloride. Police
view suspect as LNA."
LNA was agency shorthand for Lone Nut Assassin.
Milton smiled. The mark of a successful hierarchy was how well a particular task could be
accomplished without its goal being mentioned at all. Strategy, discussed at the highest levels,
translated into tactics at middle levels -- without the specifics ever being communicated -- and
from there trickled downward to operatives as individual actions with no apparent trail of actual
orders leading back to the top. This had been the technique of leadership long before Henry II
had established plausible deniability in the assassination of Thomas à Becket by uttering
no
more than the rhetorical question, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
Milton knew that merely by asking if Poubelle might be in danger because of his public
battle with NASA, he had communicated to his aides the need for Poubelle's removal. The
assistant quickest to intuit his wishes would be the one who would most quickly find an
underling to whom another vague implication would be made. From there, the chain of imply
and infer continued until someone contacted the psychiatrist and -- perhaps -- suggested an
increase in the dosage of fluoxytine or an in-depth discussion with the patient about her feelings
toward Poubelle, or maybe a session on "acting-out" or whatever was the shibboleth du
jour.
Milton slipped the report into the shredder, which sliced it in six different directions and
ejected it from the underside as a minor snow flurry of small paper flakes.
To rule by decree was pleasing enough, he thought, but to be surrounded by minions skilled
at interpreting unspoken wishes was far more sublime.
Milton worked late nearly every night. It was not that he needed to, but that he chose to.
Something about the NSA offices -- constantly abuzz with intrigue, incessantly flowing with
information plucked from a conniving humanity -- filled him with a sensation of standing on a
firm rock in the middle of a vast, turbulent river watching the political and historical waters flow
around him. More than anything, he gloried in the giddy realization that he could alter that flow
with less than the point of a finger; with an ambiguous wave, a casual word.
When he first achieved the high water mark of the bureaucracy, he discovered that agents
would make mistakes in interpreting his wishes. It soon grew apparent, though, that it was an
organic, evolving process that winnowed away the ineffective to leave only those who could
most consistently execute his unstated desires. To his surprise, he also saw that the mistakes
seldom mattered, since undesired results could be explained away as random chance or even
turned once again toward his own ends. The only danger in a mistake, he realized early on, was
if it caused damage to the secret wishes of those even more powerful than he.
Such an irredeemable foulup had never happened. The only proof that he was consistently
pleasing his superiors was empirical: he was still alive and still NSA chief.
"Mr. Milton," the voice on the intercom said. "Call from Mr. Kirk."
Milton realized that he was about to make another part of the river suddenly splash up and
shift course. "Put him on," he said, "and secure the line."

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