Chapter 1: Kings of the High Frontier



Part One
The Velvet Glove

CHAPTER 1

All pioneers throughout history have reached their destinations either in spite
of or because of interference from others. They either willingly departed intolerable social
conditions (the Plymouth settlers) or were forcibly deported (the Botany Bay colony). While we
see no agency that would exile us to Space (we should be so lucky), we plainly see many that
would forcibly prevent us from leaving Earth. These agencies, groups, or individuals are
demonstrably the enemies of peace, progress, and human evolution. Their names shall become
known to you.
-- Preface to The Orbital Settlers' Guide

14 January, First Year
A warm gulf breeze caressed Tammy's face as she ran through the humid Houston morning.
She exercised despite the billowing rain clouds, as she did every day at dawn after her arrival at
the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Rainy days soothed her. IFR days she called them,
because she would use instrument flight rules when piloting a jet on such a day. Constant
drizzle or intermittent downpour, wet weather calmed her in a way no sunny day could. When it
rained, the spirit surrounding the Space Center mirrored the stark greyness in her heart.
Houston was home to the Johnson Space Center not because it was intended to be the source
of any manned spaceflights, but because President John Kennedy, nearly four decades before,
required the cooperation of his running mate to win votes in the south and west during the hotly
contested 1960 election. The price of such cooperation was for Texas to control spacecraft
launched from Florida -- from Cape Canaveral, 900 miles away. The deal set the tenor of all
subsequent space projects.
The Johnson Space Center and its Floridian counterpart shared one unfortunate similarity:
both endured frequent encounters with hurricanes. One was due this morning.
Tammy ran amid evidence of the power of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administation and felt like a child among giants: rockets permanently affixed to pedestals
towered over her head; spacecraft flown by her heroes long before she was born arced toward
the slate sky, frozen in flight; flags snapped loudly in the wind. She took a deep breath and
savored the warm, wet smells released by the approaching low-pressure weather system. The
smacking sound her running shoes made against the wet pavement put her in a runner's trance
with its steady beat. She had to psych herself up for one of her most loathsome duties as an
astronaut: another session of Meet The Crank.
* * *
Tammy sat in the cramped conference room waiting for the arrival of her nine o'clock
appointment. The clean, dry shuttle astronaut jump suit felt crisp and businesslike against her
skin. She glanced at her calculator watch beneath the coblat-blue sleeve: nine-fifteen. Only
mildly annoyed, she resumed reading the tech manual for the new flight software required by the
new advanced shuttle rocket motors that would soon be used on Constitution, the fifth
orbiter Congress had seen fit to fund to maintain employment in key districts an election
ago.
A moment later, she heard a knock on the open door. Glancing up, she saw a tall, gaunt man
dressed impeccably in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie. He could have been an
executive for a major computer company, but behind his deep brown eyes glowed a fire which
the forces of corporate evolution generally selected against.
"Gerald Cooper?" she asked.
"Dr. Reis." His voice was level, authoratative, something she had not expected from
someone who fancied himself a spacecraft designer.
"Call me Tammy," she said. "That's what the press corps wants."
"And what do you want?"
"A five-minute meeting," she said with curt politeness. NASA arranged these disagreeable
affairs, and Reis and the other astronauts unlucky enough to pull such public-relations duty
resented the time lost.
Cooper sat on one side of the minor axis of the elliptical table, slid a black leather portfolio
onto its polished surface, and immediately pulled drawings from inside. One by one, he quickly
slid them in front of her. She sat back and watched.
He had obviously rehearsed his spiel to be quick and simple. Simple, that is, to someone as
intimately involved with spacecraft as Tamara Reis.
"Vertical takeoff and landing, single-stage-to-orbit rocket using a super-cooled liquid
hydrogen slurry for fuel. Reentry using low-cost ablation rather than tiles for atmospheric
braking. Off-the-shelf components where possible. Hull made of aircraft-grade aluminum. Can
be manned or unmanned." He looked at her. "Or should I say 'crewed or uncrewed'?"
She smiled for the first time that morning, a sardonic curl to her lips. "Be as crude as you
want to anything but the language."
He grinned back at her, then promptly continued: "Payload for this small version is two
thousand pounds to low Earth orbit, fourteen thousand for the larger. If the engines, airframe,
and avionics meet their minimum design lifetime of one hundred flights, cost per flight could be
between a few hundred thousand and a million dollars."
All Reis said was: "Spreadsheets." He produced them instantly.
She looked them over for a moment, then said, "You estimate the cost of construction to be
one hundred million dollars?"
"For the large version. The small one should be around twenty million."
She frowned. "You're talking about routine access to Space in craft only a little more costly
than airliners."
Cooper nodded.
"You realize that the capabilities of this..." -- she glanced at the name on the designs --
"Starblazer of yours are similar to the promises initially made for the Shuttle: low cost, fast
turnaround time, small ground crew for launch."
Cooper nodded and said nothing. She watched him for a moment, realizing that he must
have been through this many times before, must have reached this point with others, and now he
sat patiently, as if expecting the head-shake to come, followed by a condescending smile at the
dreamer and a hundred reasons why he was wrong. Instead, Astronaut Reis turned her attention
back at the spreadsheets.
The five-minute mark came and went.
After ten minutes, Reis raised her head to gaze at her visitor. In her eyes glimmered
something beyond mere approval, something approaching near reverence. Yet her first question
belied the look: "Do you know why this spacecraft will never fly?"
Cooper remained silent.
"Neither do I." She let the papers slide back to the surface of the table. "Whom have you
shown these to?"
"Everyone I can. People at Stratodyne, General Aerospace, MacArthur-Truitt. You're the
first one at NASA to grant me an interview."
Her smile came back; just a tilt on the right side of her mouth. "I didn't grant it. You were
sloughed off to me. I'm supposed to let you talk for a few minutes, awe you with my presence,
give you an autograph, and hustle you out. We receive hundreds of requests for meetings every
day, Mr. Cooper. People who want to tell NASA that we're going about it all wrong, or that God
is angry at our attempts to breach Heaven, or that they have evidence the Apollo moon landings
never happened. Add to them the malcontents and half-wits who want to be astronauts, and we
endure a flood of requests. We even get a few spacecraft designers a month. I've met some of
them. They're all very sincere. And their designs are trash, lead buckets that could never fly."
She laid her hands upon the diagrams and figures, strong hands with trim, clean, unpolished
nails that she suddenly realized were the kind of hands into which such a miracle should be
delivered. "These could work. These would work. And at the costs you estimate.
Why?"
"Because," he answered slowly and carefully, "Freespace Orbital does not labor under
NASA's technological imperative to create new systems. Everything in Starblazer is based on
currently available technology."
Reis nodded grimly, feeling suddenly very old, like a mother who had watched too many of
her children die young. "And that is why your attempt to interest NASA is futile. You'll never
procure a contract to build something this cheap, this simple, this... effective."
Cooper looked mystified. Not at the truth of her words, she suspected, but at the fact she
uttered them at all. She watched as, slowly, an awareness took hold of him. She had told him as
directly as she could that NASA was uninterested in Starblazer not because it wouldn't work, but
because it would. His gaze hardened, his voice cooled. "Dr. Reis, I'm afraid there's
been some sort of awful misunderstanding."
She looked at him with a premonition of danger, as if she had just lit a fuse to something
uncontainably explosive.
"I never intended," Cooper said, "to ask for NASA's help with Starblazer."
"Then what do you want of us?"
"I want NASA to stay out of my way."
Reis stared at the man, stunned. After a moment, she asked a question in a voice
cautious.
"Do you know a man named Paul Volnos?" Above all things, she feared an affirmative
answer answer.
"Who is Paul Volnos?"
Tammy Reis said nothing, but the terrible pounding in her heart lessened. With an
imperceptible sigh, she gathered up Cooper's presentation and handed the papers to him without
a word.
Cooper accepted them. "Thank you for your time, Dr. Reis." He zipped up his portfolio. It
sounded to her like the rending of flesh. He rose with a cool dignity and turned toward the
door.
"Mr. Cooper!" she said suddenly to his retreating back. The anguish in her voice caused
him to stop and turn, alarmed.
In that instant, her composure returned. "Mr. Cooper, it is both noble and futile to stand in
the path of Juggernaut."
"I won't stand," he said coolly. "I'll fly beyond its reach."
The door closed behind him. Astronaut Tamara Reis stared at the mahogany oval for a long
while afterward. Then she noticed one sheet of paper had fallen to the floor. She picked it up.
It was a sketch of Starblazer. Carefully, reverently, she slipped it into her binder and stole away
with it.
***
The meeting both disappointed and yet somehow exhilarated the rocket designer. Gerald
Cooper felt like a force of nature as he strode off the grounds of the Center. Everywhere around
him stood the evidence of NASA's waning power: rockets towered overhead, unusable relics
corroding in the ocean air; spacecraft bolted to pedestals arced toward the grey sky, never to
touch the heavens again; flags trembled in the wind. Amid all this fading grandeur, he knew that
he possessed a greater power: the power of an idea.
The spaceflight center stood as a monument, Cooper thought, to a dinosaur. Big and
lumbering, it had once stumbled its way to a great summit -- the Moon -- and shortly thereafter
collapsed under its own weight. Cooper, with his tiny, elegant spaceship, emulated the quick,
darting mammals that would someday grow to become the dominant force on -- and off -- the
planet. Starblazer, the spacecraft he had designed, was to the Saturn rocket what man was to
Tyrannosaurus Rex: smaller and weaker, surely, but in the end more versatile, more adaptable,
more able to perform the variety of functions necessary to put people into Space.
And now Gerald Cooper, the next stage of evolution, departed the lair of the gigantic beast
he sought to supplant. And he smiled. He had met the beast, and saw that it was toothless.
* * *
At his hotel room, he switched on his computer and over the next half-hour created a press
release. It would go to only one publication: The Private Space Journal, a
monthly eight-page newsletter published by his friend Thom Brodsky as an adjunct to the
mission of Freespace Orbital.
The fact that Cooper paid Brodsky's salary never guaranteed publication of his press
releases. Though a partner in Freespace Orbital, Brodsky held his own high editorial standards.
Cooper worked hard to craft the article. When finished, he read it over.

In a meeting with Space Shuttle astronaut and possible first female
Shuttle
commander Tamara Reis, Freespace Orbital founder Gerry Cooper made his case for the
cost-effectiveness of the Starblazer class of VTOL/SSTO spacecraft. Dr. Reis was very
receptive to the presentation, expressing her opinion that, indeed, Starblazer could and would
operate as envisioned.
Though Dr. Reis broached the subject of NASA support for the Starblazer concept,
Cooper explicitly stated his desire not to have Freespace involved with NASA in any way. His
vision of the future foresees private enterprise, not tax subsidies, as the main engine of progress
in Space.
Overall, the meeting was cordial and encouraging, with Dr. Reis contributing a safety tip (of
which Mr. Cooper was already aware). While there may be some at NASA who are openly
hostile
to outside competition, Dr. Reis was charming, witty, and enthusiastic. NASA has chosen a fine
representative to interface with the alternative launch system
enterprise.

That ought to do it, he thought.
***
Everything she had learned in her eight years at NASA told her to forget about Gerald
Cooper.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration had one single goal, one solitary path to
Space, and that was the Shuttle Transportation System. Its development consumed billions of
dollars. Hundreds of millions of man-hours had been spent already, with no end in sight. Cost
overruns and constant delays had been part of the atmosphere of the project long before she had
joined up in the days after the destruction of Challenger. She knew nothing different.
She was trained to pilot a movable pyramid, a gargantuan monument to NASA. No other
systems
could be afforded or permitted.
She remembered, though. She remembered a man -- a boy, actually. A boy with a mind and
a drive most men did not even have the capacity to wish they possessed. Where was he
now? Where was the man who had reached so high to touch the stars? Had she -- more than a
decade ago, a child of fifteen -- truly destroyed him? Where was Paul Volnos?
Paul was gone. Of that much she felt certain. Otherwise, he would have made his presence
known in some way. His dreams -- had he pursued them -- would have shaken the world by
now.
Here, though, came another one such as he: Gerald Cooper. Maybe there was a chance to
do for Cooper what she could never have done for Paul.
Tamara Reis made her decision. She would help Gerald Cooper. The thought of the
possibilities thrilled and terrified her. After eight years in the NASA bureaucracy, she knew that
only an indirect method would work. She needed an outsider. Someone with connections in
ærospace, but unafilliated with NASA. She needed Barry Gibbon's help.
The thought of that made her guts tighten.
***
Barry Gibbon was her mentor, if he could be called that. Many people considered him their
mentor. He certainly acted as her patron; the Robertson Barrett Gibbon Space Scholarship paid
her way through college, the National Organisation of Space Supporters championed her
astronaut career, and Gibbon himself had become nearly a friend, which made her growing
discomfort at the meeting all the more disturbing.
She flew a T-38 jet trainer from Houston to Washington DC. Jon Franck, a friend and
fellow astronaut, flew with her. Instead of landing at Andrews Air Force Base, they touched
down at Washington Naval Air Station -- Franck was a Naval aviator -- and took a pool car to
Gibbon's home in Langley. Franck dropped her off and drove away to sightsee, his flaxen hair a
splash of gold between the Navy blue car and the battleship grey of the winter sky.
Gibbon's home made a statement by making no statement at all. Of moderate size, it sat
quietly and without ostentation at the end of a cul de sac of equally expensive and tasteful homes
in an older part of Langley that had not lost its colonial charm to the metastatic growth of
government buildings. Tamara walked briskly up the steps to ring the doorbell.
After a moment, the door unlocked and swung wide. A small, grey-haired woman in a
high-necked, ankle-length dress from another era gazed warmly at the visitor.
"Tammy, dear," she said with gentle lilt. "What brings you here?"
Reis smiled with equal warmth. "Hello, Evangeline. I have an appointment with Barry.
How are you?"
A pair of cats -- a Persian and a tabby -- padded through the dimly-lit, wood-paneled foyer to
rub their heads against the old woman's ankles and gaze haughtily up at Tammy.
"Oh, I'm simply grand." Her voice possessed an other-worldly tone. She had always been
that way, ever since Tammy knew her. According to her brother, she behaved that way even as a
teenager.
Gibbon appeared at the door, portable phone in one hand. His receding, thin grey hair
reflected the hue of the dense cloud cover. A dark brown paisley silk robe and matching slippers
blended into the deep chestnut hue of the woodwork in the hallway. He seemed a part of this
place as if he had been carefully painted in.
"Lud," he said to the handset, "I have a lovely guest and must ring off immediately." He
smiled cordially at Tammy. "No, you old dog, one of my protégés. An astronaut."
He pronounced the title with a verbal flourish that would have sounded sarcastic coming from
anyone else. This, though, was the resonant voice of Barry Gibbon, the man who had made
space exploration commonplace.
With an imperious tap, he switched off the phone and set it on the foyer table. He brushed
past his sister to say, "Come in, Tammy, my dear. I haven't seen you in months! Angie -- bring
us some tea."
A dry heat filled the home, repelling the cool humidity outside. Tammy smelled tea in the
air, and, faintly, the scent of their half-dozen cats. She sat in his office in a comfy, antique
leather chair, gazing at the photographs and awards on the walls: Gibbon shaking hands and
smiling at the most powerful, influential people in the world, with presidents, kings, actors, and
baseball legends. One wall he devoted entirely to astronauts. She saw herself standing at her
graduation, receiving the National Student Space Award from Gibbon. She looked so young in
that picture, so enthusiastic, so... unstoppable.
"Well, Tammy," Gibbon's sonorous tone filled the room as he took the tea tray from his
sister and set it on a small table made exclusively for the purpose. Evangeline left the room
without a word. "How has NASA been treating you lately?"
She shrugged. "Very busy, what with Endeavour prepping for another flight. The
delays have been unbelievable."
Gibbon dismissed it with a wave of one hand while the other passed her a teacup. "Space
travel itself is unbelievable, hence such delays are to be expected. Exploring space is as
complex an undertaking as--"
"As the invasion of Normandy in World War Two."
Gibbon smiled. "I suppose I must come up with a new simile. As complicated as Desert
Storm?"
Reis put her teacup down without taking a sip. "Barry, why does space travel have
to be complex? Why is the Shuttle so expensive, so intricate? The Russians dragged way
behind us technologically, but Mir was a legitimate space station. And Skylab took just
one launch. Why are--"
Gibbon waved a finger at her. "Now Tammy, what have I told you all these years? What
have I been telling everyone? Space exploration is humanity's greatest adventure, and its most
dangerous. One can't just pop up there and set up housekeeping. The Shuttle is our workhorse,
our space truck, our Conestoga. Unlike trucks and wagons, though, it can't break down halfway
through the trip. We learned that from Challenger. Slow caution must be the
watchword." His grey eyebrows rose a minute degree. "With you I seldom have to lapse into
bits from my speeches. What's troubling you?"
"This." She handed him the sketch of Starblazer.
Gibbon glanced at it quickly and handed it back to her. "Gerry Cooper."
"You know him?"
Gibbon eased back in his chair. "Of course I know of him. I keep track of many of
these... private efforts."
"You never speak of them. I haven't seen articles about them in the club journals."
"Does a medical journal deal seriously with every crackpot cure for cancer that crops up?
The National Organisation of Space Supporters can't waste time with such people. We'd be up
to our ears in space cadets."
"Isn't that what you want?" Something in the way he spoke made the nervous knot in her
stomach grow tighter and tighter.
"I want people who are sober and solemn about space, Tammy. People such as you. People
who are in it for the long haul, who will work with NASA and the United Nations for as long as
it
takes to bring about a permanent presence in space. Look at what happened with Apollo. A
headlong rush to make it to the Moon, then what? The first American in space becomes the first
man to play golf on another planet. After that, nothing. I wouldn't call that a victory. The
progression into space is something we have to take slowly. It may be thirty years before we see
people regularly living in space or on the Moon. We can't expect -- and we must not allow --
NASA to make short-range compromises just to satisfy the wanderlust of a few hopeless
romantics
such as Cooper."
Reis took a sip of the tea. It tasted too sweet, went down too easily. "Don't you think I
know that?"
"I'm sorry, my dear. Of course you do. Your devotion to NASA is something I would never
question."
"Then you understand why I would like to find some way to involve Mr. Cooper with
NASA."
A thin smile slowly grew on Gibbon's lips. "I think I'm beginning to. You realize, of
course, that such assistance on my part must be purely sub rosa. This is a personal favor
I would not grant to just anyone."
"I understand."
Gibbon relaxed into his chair, as if some great battle had just been won. His gaze never
strayed from his guest. "I'll help you with Mr. Cooper, Tammy. You have my promise on that.
I'll see to it that NASA takes care of him."
* * *
Reis left Gibbon's home feeling weak and confused. She felt the same way, she realized, as
when she told Paul Volnos of her intent to join NASA. She squelched the memory and refused
to
consider why every time she defended the greatness of her agency she felt as if she were
betraying something even greater.
Proceed to Chapter 2
Return to the Table of Contents