Chapter 45: Kings of the High Frontier
CHAPTER 45
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
-- Reggie Leach
17 August
It was a good day to leave Earth. The pre-dawn hour witnessed a scramble of activity inside
and outside the factory. Outside, Crush 69 and his gang, dressed in their finest fringed black
leather and carrying spanking-clean Uzis and Glocks in addition to their standard-issue baseball
bats and knives, gently but firmly rousted street people and other squatters from all the rathole
abandoned buildings within a five block radius. Video-communications majors set up a circle of
rooftop cameras to capture the liftoff and fiddled with the satellite antenna intended to receive
the spacecopter's telemetry and other transmissions.
Inside the factory, scores of students rushed purposefully this way and that. One crew used a
cherry-picker crane filched from Con-Ed to dismantle the sagging roof of the building, careful
lest the slightest piece of debris fall and damage the spaceship or its forty-foot-wide rotary
wings. A ground crew hauled off the inflammable detritus, giving the fueling crew wide berth as
they pumped jet-fuel grade kerosene and liquid oxygen into the waiting tanks from a succession
of small tanker trucks. A thick blanket of cryogenic fog socked in much of the building like
something out of a Victorian murder mystery.
***
Fire Department Inspector MacCray did not usually spend his nights roaming through the
South Bronx. Tonight, though -- and for the past week -- he played the detective, wandering the
dark avenues and darker alleyways in plain clothes. So far, he had come up with nothing. Then
he noticed two trucks lumbering down a deserted street. Two tanker trucks, both a little singed,
one with a license plate missing.
Backtracking the trucks to the factory building, MacCray quietly observed the uncommon
activity. Light streamed out of cracks in the painted windows. Young people came and went,
obviously in a purposeful rush.
At first he presumed it to be a methamphetamine lab or some sort of gang headquarters. On
silent feet he crept up to a rear window to peer inside. His angle of view encompassed the entire
three-story-tall rotorocket and the remaining trucks that fueled it. The ceiling crew, having
removed the beams and roofing material in a wide swath around the rocket, proceeded to cut and
drop the remainder with less precision. Workers on the ground gave the activity wide berth.
No other equipment remained inside the factory but the giant white cylinder, cross, and cone
of the spacecraft and the tankers. All the tools and machinery had been surreptitiously returned
to their rightful owners. MacCray saw only an incredibly huge structure filling up with
explosive liquids. After a moment of utter incomprehension, he raced away from the building to
search for a phone.
***
Bernadette and Sam -- dressed in their skin-hugging black Spandex spacesuits -- strode
through the crowd of students. Each outfit bore custom-colored trim and hash marks on the
arms, Bernadette's a retropunk neon pink, Sam's silver. One of the ground crew handed them a
pair of armbands emblazoned with the official mission patch for the flight: planet Earth wearing
a coonskin cap at a rakish angle, surrounded by the legend "Space or Bust!"
A mist of cold air flowed down the side of the fueling spacecraft over them. The greasy
odor of kerosene mixed with the cool, fresh-air scent of oxygen in a combination that thrilled
them with the threat of imminent danger. Smoke evacuators -- courtesy of the NYU
fire-suppression unit -- dissipated the explosive mix to the outside air. A riot of colors in motion
blurred the factory floor as students rushed about setting up the sacrificial cameras that would be
incinerated after capturing the first few seconds of engine performance.
The two spacefarers approached the base of the gantry ladder. A war whoop drew their
attention upward. After being repeated a few times, the rest of the crowd took notice and fell
silent. The only sound was the creak and hiss of fuel tanks filling.
William David Crockett IV stood on the scaffolding at the hatch overhead, his ebon
spacesuit and brassy trim barely visible beneath fringed buckskin pants and shirt. Atop his head
sat his coonskin cap and from his belt hung his Bowie knife, powder horn, and necessaries
pouch. He cradled in his arm an ancient flintlock rifle, flint carefully wrapped in Mylar to
prevent an unintended spark.
"Thanks to all of you," he shouted toward the ground crew and cameras, "this
spacecopter will be the first privately-built crewed vessel to achieve orbit. We kept a lot of you
in the dark, working away from the factory, until tonight, but now that you're watching at the
dorms and over there at Washington Heights, we've provided plenty of beer to make up for
that."
Over the cheers, he shouted down to the video team. "Cameras ready?"
"Check!" came the hollered answer.
He turned his gaze to the tank crew. "Fuel?"
"Fully loaded!" one yelled, disconnecting the frost-encrusted hose with gloved hands.
The other two members of the flight crew climbed up the gantry ladder to join Davy.
"This is it, gang," he said quietly to his companions. "This is the moment we've been
looking forward to and dreading. And either by coincidence, subconscious design, or divine
intervention, today just happens to be the original Davy Crockett's birthday." He glanced at
Friedman. "Swami Samesh, do you have a proper invocation?"
"God..." he said, gazing down twenty feet to the factory floor hidden in mist. "Please don't
let us screw up."
Davy clapped him on the back. "Well said! I think you speak for us all. Climb
aboard!"
***
Outside, only a few blocks away, Inspector MacCray reached a phone booth. As with most
phones in the South Bronx, this one had been completely vandalized. He spied another down the
block. Running toward it, he heard footsteps from an alley.
"Well, well, well, oh me brother," Crush 69 said, flanked by two of his droogs from the
SBX-13 gang. "Another stray. And this one doesn't look native."
***
Graffiti covered one side of the spacecraft, applied by various students using a can of
day-glo orange spray paint to sign their massive work of art. Bernadette -- at the top of the
gantry with the others -- used the can to scrawl Crockett's Rocket next to the
hatchway.
"I've been trying to avoid that little bit of poetry for the entire project," Davy said with a
sneering mock grimace. Bernadette merely smiled warmly and presented him with a long, slow
good-luck kiss. While they embraced, Sam elbowing past the pair to squeeze into his seat,
Davy's hand reached blindly up to grasp a sheet of paper taped over the hatch. Removing it with
a loud rip, he revealed the ship's true name in brilliant letters of gold and red. Breaking free
from their liplock, Crockett turned her around to show her the name.
"Bodacious Bernadette?" she squeaked with a yelp of joy, nearly breaking his ribs
with a hug and almost pitching him backward off the gantry when she kissed him a second,
deeper time.
Crockett turned to face the grinning crowds below. "Everyone clear the area. Head back to
NYU. Launch command is set up in the Physics dorm." He paused, one arm around
Bernadette's waist, then raised his rifle and bellowed "Spaceward, Ho!"
The two followed Friedman inside to take their seats and strap in. They locked on their Air
Force surplus helmets but left the visors up.
"Here goes somethin'," Davy said, switching on the flight computer. A synthetic female
voice -- adapted from Natasha's -- began to read through the preflight checklist.
"T-minus forty-five minutes," it said. "Seal crew cabin."
"Check!" Bernadette confirmed. Sam pressed a key to signal the computer to move on.
"Attach and tighten five-point crew harnesses."
Each crew member in turn confirmed that they were indeed strapped in.
"Lower cabin pressure to eight PSI and flush with oxygen."
"Check," Bernadette again confirmed.
"You all went to the bathroom, I trust?"
"Hey! Who put that in?" Friedman shouted.
Davy Crockett snickered wickedly.
***
MacCray -- mugged and missing his pants -- stumbled out of the alley toward another phone,
discovered that it worked, and realized that he no longer possessed any change.
After a moment or two of angry rage, he realized that he could punch 911 for free. His
finger jabbed at the buttons. The line connected. And encountered a busy signal.
***
The dwindling crowd of students raced away from the factory in cars, vans, and on foot.
The last tanker trucks rolled out. All that remained in the hollowed-out, cavernous building was
the spacecopter, the engine-igniting pyrotechnics, and a trio of video cameras hooked to a small
transmitter.
Back at the NYU physics dorm, scores of students and post-grads monitored the scene.
Hacker and a dozen others watched the computers, Natasha stayed in radio contact with the
spacecraft, a couple broadcast on ham radios telling their distant friends to "wait and see -- you'll
know what it was when it happens!" All in all, their tone sounded crisp and professional, yet
nearly breathless with anticipation.
On the flight deck, the three finished their computerized checklist. Crockett's displayed
guidance and navigation information and also tracked the airframe's structural integrity and
dynamic stress. Friedman's showed the condition and functioning of the engines, fuel delivery,
and electrical systems powering the torque-compensating anti-rotation motors. Bernadette kept
her eye on the life support systems and tapped into NORAD's orbital debris management system
to avoid encounters with any potentially dangerous space clutter.
The sixty-second countdown commenced. Prompted by the computer, Davy flipped a
switch to send a piercing alarm wailing through the deserted section of the borough.
Almost deserted, but for MacCray -- finally through to the police -- shouting
frantically over the sound of the alarm.
"Do you hear that?" he screamed, ducking and covering in his phone booth with a finger in
one ear and the receiver pressed firmly against the other. "Get fire equipment over here,
scramble the HazMat team, call out SWAT, and alert the Air Force!"
***
"Oh God," Sam said as he watched the numbers descending on the computer screen along
with a bewildering cascade of information on all aspects of the vehicle. "This is it!"
Bernadette turned to Davy. "I love you." She grasped his hand.
The computerized countdown cued up Holzt's "Mars" theme from The
Planets on a portable CD player duct-taped to the bottom of the control panel.
"T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six -- ignition sequence start -- four..."
The cabin rumbled as fuel began to flow from the tanks into the rotor-blade feed-tubes and
outward to the engine pods. A low, steady hiss commenced and grew louder as each of the four
rotor-tip engines blazed simultaneously into life. The rotor began to spin, an eerie hum like a
deep-throated bumblebee filling the air, reverberating throughout the empty city block. The
computer adjusted the individual thrusts 20,000 times a second to compensate for torque and
other flight variables. Lift increasing every second as the huge propeller sped up, the vessel rose
up from the ground at a rate slower than the thrust of a true rocket but breathtakingly swifter
than any other aircraft. An invisible, firm force pressed the three into their seats. Crockett noted
the liftoff by observing the very edge of visibility at the bottom of his viewing port. Beyond the
spinning circle of fire created by the tip engines, he saw movement.
"We've cleared the roof line!" he shouted. "I can see the Bronx!"
Two police helicopters racing toward the factory focused their spotlights on the cloud of
billowing steam eerily illuminated by a fire within its depths.
Suddenly, a white, blunt conical shape erupted from the cloud as if thrust upward by a
mighty hand. Out of the swirling cauldron of fire and mist whirled a flaming wheel that spun
like a titan's fireworks. The choppers veered away from the hellish scene, their pilots reacting
almost reflexively, their attention riveted on the brilliant meteor pinwheeling upward from the
squalor like a halo of fire setting the entire night ablaze.
A video camera on a roof five blocks away caught the blastoff for the benefit of the students
back at NYU. They watched the screen for a moment, then scrambled to windows for a real
look. The few dedicated ones who sat by their monitors longed to experience the moment but
stuck to their posts determined to lift the bird all the way to orbit.
The hiss and whir inside the spacecraft grew deafening as the rockets pushed the rotor to
maximum lifting speed. The pressure of acceleration tapered off at their maximum rate of
climb. As the engines burned fuel, however, the mass of the ship decreased, which meant they
pulled two gravities and more.
After two minutes during which they shot upward ærodynamically to 45,000 feet,
Crockett said, "Here comes the hard part -- Mach One and transition to pure rocket power!"
"Roger, Davy," Natasha's voice came over the airwaves. "We've all got our
fingers crossed down here."
The spacecopter, high enough in the troposphere so that the rotor was nearly useless, now
also encountered minimal drag. The rotor sped up, which increased the centrifugal pump rate,
throttling the engines up to full speed. The ærodynamic surfaces of the rotor blades had
very little air to bite, so when the tips went supersonic -- which on a helicopter would have
meant control degradation, noise, and decreased efficiency -- the entire spacecraft did, too.
The ship creaked, groaned, whirred, and clanged.
"Max-Q!" Crockett yelled. They passed through the most dangerous part of the flight, where
ærodynamic stress on the ship increased to its greatest. If the ship held together, they
would make it into Space. If not, they would never know.
"Still alive," Friedman said into his microphone. "Still alive."
The interior of the spacecraft shook violently passing through Max-Q. A cabinet popped
open, spilling a load of freeze-dried food toward the rear of the cabin. Everyone gripped their
arm rests as they rode the wildest thrill ride in the solar system.
Suddenly, the vibrations smoothed out and they experienced another increase in gees.
"Past Max-Q!" Penny yelled. "Eleven miles altitude, eight downrange. Four thousand
FPS."
"Cabin pressure at eight p.s.i.," Bernadette said. "Jalopy's holding together."
"Still alive," Sam repeated into his microphone. "Still alive."
"Roger that," Carla radioed to the voyagers. "We appreciate it. Stay that
way."
The three spacefarers gritted their teeth under the ever-increasing force of the acceleration.
As they rose higher and higher, as the air thinned out, and as they lost tons of mass in consumed
fuel, the rockets imparted greater and greater acceleration per pound of thrust. The onboard
computer altered the rotorocket's trajectory to an optimized pitch profile for insertion into a 100
nautical mile orbit.
At three gees for over seven minutes, they felt like human pancakes. Friedman nearly
hyperventilated from anxiety, though Bernadette took it well; in fact, she experienced an odd
tingle that spread through her body as the pressure and buffeting increased.
Crockett merely grinned. The acceleration dragged his grin down into a bizarre grimace,
almost like a madman's.
***
Closer to Earth, the police helicopters rattled in the corkscrewing wake of the ship's exhaust.
The helical sound wave from the launch roared out in all directions, but even a few miles away
the rotorocket could only be seen and not heard.
All of New York and New Jersey gazed up at this new star rising comet-like into the night
sky. From Manhattan to Riverdale, from Newark to Hempstead, more and more people
interrupted their individual lives to turn their heads up and see the gently whispering circle of
light and smoke and wonder in the night.
Everett Stevens, walking across campus, saw and heard the liftoff. He also heard cheers
from the dorm rooms. His worst fears more than realized, he rushed into the crowded building,
shoving and wedging through the knots of students, a black thunderbolt of pure anger. On the
third floor, he rammed through the clot of onlookers to burst in upon a makeshift mission control
buzzing with activity, some of it beer-related, but most of it cool, sober, and efficacious.
"What in the name of Hell is going on here!" he bellowed. Then he saw hanging on one wall
a rendition of the mission patch everyone now openly wore on armbands.
"Oh, my God," he uttered in a mixture of awe and horror. Someone laughed and stuck a
beer can in his hand. Without taking his eyes off the video screen, he chugged a nerve-calming
jolt of brew.
"I can still see it!" someone yelled at the window.
"This is the voice of NYU mission control," said Carla Pulaski, one of Bernadette's friends
from the nuclear magnetic resonance lab. Her accent was pure unalloyed Brooklyn, but with a
crisp efficiency that reflected how seriously she took being the voice now beamed via satellite
uplink to the entire world. "After a successful launch from the South Bronx, a privately-owned
and operated spacecraft is headed for Low Earth Orbit."
***
A thousand miles away, Air Force General Harry Dorn elbowed his way into the
NORAD-Space Command monitor room, followed by a dozen assistants of various lesser ranks.
A man of average height and girth, he displayed a bulldog expression that glowered fiercely as
he stared at a video screen in furious amazement. The screen -- two stories tall, taking up half
the wall of the huge room -- showed a 3-D digital map of New York, canted to a nearly
horizontal angle, with a red ascent trajectory rising out over the Atlantic. Tension was high.
"Any idea what it is?" Dorn demanded of the captain at his side.
"Radio reports intercepted from a couple police choppers in the vicinity mark it as a rocket
of some sort. Ascent phase too slow for any missile design in the database, yet too fast for
anything else except a jet climbing on afterburners. It's just shooting up like an elevator. Wait a
sec." Capt. Lee pressed the earphone closer to his head. "Signal coming through RCA SatCom
Eleven." He listened while others scrambled to make sense of the paucity of data.
"Trajectory and acceleration yield a mass of about twenty-five tons," someone said over the
intercom. "Payload can't be more than a ton unless they're using composites, which the radar
image suggests might be the--"
Capt. Lee interrupted with, "Verbal telemetry. Woman's voice." He gazed up at the screen
with an expression of total disbelief. "NYU mission control?"
"Stay on it, Captain," Dorn said sharply, then barked an order to a lieutenant. "Get me that
jackass at the NSA -- Milton!"
"Online, sir," Lieutenant Kent said.
"Dorn here, Steve. What the hell are you doing out there?" He frowned upon hearing
Milton's reply, his folds of flesh redoubling beyond bulldog wrinkles into something resembling
a Shar Pei.
"Well," Dorn cut in, "the trajectory tells us that it's likely to go into orbit,
Mister Milton, sir. So why don't you get on that little red phone and call Beijing
before they get into a snit about this and decide to lob one in our direction!"
He turned toward Capt. Lee. "Bases on alert?"
"Yessir. DefCon Three."
"Downrange tracking?"
"From Arecibo to Farnborough, locked on."
"Any jets we can scramble for a looksee?"
Capt. Lee shook his head. "They got the jump on us."
***
Back at the dorm, Dean Stevens seized a telephone and reached up to punch a number. No
dial tone. Following the cord to the wall, he saw the plug lying on the floor, replaced by cords
leading to the room's computer modems. Spying a girl on another phone, he pushed his way
across the crowded room.
"Isn't it wild?" she gushed to a friend on the other end. As Stevens snatched the handset
from her fingers, she shouted "Okay, 'bye, talk to you tomor--"
He punched 911. And got a busy signal. Before he could repunch, a student leaned on the
cradle, saying "Sorry, Mr. Stevens. Incoming calls only tonight."
Stevens grasped the student's shirt, pulled him close, and hollered "You people are insane!
Do you know in what danger you've put the city, yourselves, and the rest of the world?"
The other man shrugged. "They blasted off safely. The only risk now is to crew. Where's
your spirit of adventure?"
"Where's your common sense?" Stevens asked. "What if some other country thinks we've
launched a missile at them?"
Another student -- shorter than the one in Stevens's hands and sporting more pens in his shirt
pocket -- said, "Their trajectory puts them into orbit before they cross any hostile nations. And
we're broadcasting our peaceful intentions!"
Stevens looked around him, released the student, and shook his head. "You're all
suspended," he muttered under the din before leaving the dorm in quest of another phone. "As if
you cared."
***
"Being tracked by NORAD," Bernadette calmly shouted to the others. "They've got our
trajectory."
Davy added, "We're right on the beam to orbit -- let 'em try and catch us!"
"We're using fuel faster than projected," Friedman said, "but still within parameters. Good
APU's. All systems normal," he added, a look of continuing relief in his face.
The ship, still under acceleration, grew quieter despite the roar of the engines.
"We're beyond the atmosphere!" Bernadette cried in near spiritual ecstasy. "We made
it!"
"We're halfway to anywhere," Davy Crockett said, putting his hands behind his head and
feeling the exhilaration of the spacecraft's motion while Bernadette kept watch on the orbital
plots on her screen.
The sky beyond the thick Lexan windows, long darkened from the orange-grey of a New
York night, cleared even more as they left the stratosphere and entered the sharp, crisp,
star-scattered obsidian hue of Space. The weight of acceleration grew less bothersome with
each passing moment. It would soon depart them in an epiphany of release.
***
"Sir." Lt. Kent handed the telephone to Gen. Dorn. Dorn identified himself, listened for a
moment, then thanked the caller.
"That was the South Bronx Fire Department. It seems their arson investigator came upon a
God-damned rocket factory in an abandoned building. Saw a bunch of God-damned
college kids doing a pre-launch."
"Kids?" Capt. Lee asked, swiveling in his chair to stare up at the general.
Dorn stepped toward the huge monitor screen, glaring with troubled old eyes at the
trajectory plot. "Yes, captain. We've got a God-damned homebuilt in orbit."
***
Gibbon first gained knowledge of the launch when he felt more than heard it. The dorm
room in which he had been sealed for three days began to vibrate, causing the wadded-up, empty
bags of horrendously oily potato chips and other reprehensible post-adolescent food to rattle and
buzz along the linoleum floor.
The telephone rang in the professor's prison. Picking it up anxiously, he heard Natasha's
synthesized computer voice say, "Launch is in progress. You are no longer a threat to NYU
security. Your telephone is now enabled. Have a nice day."
He punched 911 madly and waited for the call to connect. Seconds later, he slammed the
handset down. "Damned busy signal!"
He next called Steven James Milton, Jr.
"Damn you, my dear," he said acidly to the woman on the other end. "If I had not been held
captive for the last several days I would have received this week's courtesy code. 'Anthony
Trollope' was last week's damned password and ought to be fresh enough to justify connecting
me to Frederick, Chairman Milton's assistant who happens to be a member of my space
organization and rather vindictive toward idiot subordinates!"
The call transferred instantaneously.
"Steven!" Gibbon's voice cracked. "It's three NYU postgrads in an single-stage orbital
helicopter -- I know it's all geek to you, but listen -- cheap aircraft aluminum, not hardened
against attack. It can be brought down with a LEAP or any variety of kinetic-kill device. Failing
that, I say we unleash Montgomery Barron."
He snorted at Milton's stonewalling. "Did you think you could keep something like Stark
Fist secret from me, Steven? Well, then you underestimate both my interest in
subnationals and my influence in Washington."
He switched the handset off to regain the dial tone and punched in the number of campus
security. That number, too, was busy. With a muffled curse, he entered the number of one of
his graduate assistants.
"Cliff? Yes, it's me. I've been held prisoner in a dorm for three days! I don't know which
one! The one that's bricked in! I know about the rocket! Stop staring at it like a slack-jawed
bushman and come find me!"
He rung off and quickly punched in his home phone number, hoping that Evangeline had not
gone into hysteria while he sat incommunicado. On top of everything else, he did not want to
deal with an insane sister.
The phone rang once, then emitted an ear-piercing squeal.
"Hello?" he shouted. "Hello!"
The squeal stopped, followed by a click and his sister's level voice.
"Barrett? Is that you?"
"What in hell is going on there, Angie? Is someone messing with the computer
modem?"
"Why, yes, Barrett. I am."
Gibbon felt an odd sinking sensation. Something in her tone had changed from the meek,
self-effacing voice he knew. A cold malice tinged her speech.
"What the hell do you know about computers!"
"You'd be surprised at what I picked up the last few years while you gallivanted around
for weeks at a time. I learned quite a bit about computers, wandering through The
Net."
"Listen!" A growing panic seized him, a terror deepened by his sister's disturbing
metamorphosis. "I've been held captive," he nearly whined. "I've got to get to the White House.
Call--"
"I'm not calling anyone for you, dear brother. I've watched too long your dreadful
hypocrisy. Did you think I couldn't see what you were doing, what evil you enjoyed? I'm your
sister, Barrett. I know you better than anyone. I know the lives you've destroyed. I put two and
two together regarding Gerald Cooper." Her voice remained level, never rising, as if
reciting facts from a history book. "You always thought I was a dimwit because of my
reticence. Still waters run deep, brother, deeper than you think."
"Stop blathering and listen to--"
"Have you heard of a book called The Orbital Settlers'
Guide?"
"No." Bile edged up from his gut to burn his throat.
"Oh, it's very popular on The Net. I've been posting it everywhere, and e-mailing it to
every online member of NOSS. Not unlike Samizdat self-publishing. In fact, an online
publisher... oh, my, I think the URL is Pulpless-Dot-Com, isn't it? ... anyway, a nice young man
named Neil said that people would even be willing to buy it online." Suddenly, her tone
turned colder. "Barrett, dear, do you know what a meme is?"
"Meme? That idiotic concept of infectious ideas?"
"Very good, brother. While you ignored me and harried me like a fishwife, I've
unleashed a meme-plague upon UNITO."
Gibbon lost all trace of restraint. "You think an insignificant book you wrote could
undo years--"
"Ideas matter, Barrett. You know that better than any. Why else have you battled to
suppress the idea of Free Space? I've read everything you've ever written. I know you
intimately. I wrote the Guide to undercut every argument you've ever made. The djinn's
out of the bottle, my brother. Witness the magic!"
***
MacCray stood uneasily. Covered with wet soot and dirt, he stared up at the tiny pinpoint of
flame heading nearly straight up and angling over the Atlantic. The knocked-down factory
burned wanly as distant sirens grew louder. The two police helicopters returned to the area,
circling around the blaze with spotlights illuminating the scene in a twisting cyclone of dust,
smoke, and steam. News choppers joined in, some circling with the police birds, some hovering
at a distance.
A larger helicopter -- a UH-1H painted in military olive drab -- arrived with the deep,
stomach-thumping rumble of a transport, hovering low enough to disgorge a half-dozen lines
from which troops descended like silkworms. They dispersed to secure the area, one of them
taking a bead on MacCray, who had no pants to show, let alone his badge. Embarrassed and
furious, MacCray raised his arms in surrender and shouted above the din, "I'm Chief Arson
Investigator MacCray with the Bronx Fire Department! I can make a full report to your
commanding officer!"
The private merely pointed his M-16 at the man in underwear, saying, "Please stay where
you are, sir, until the area's secured."
MacCray kept his arms in the air and quietly fumed.
***
Onboard Bodacious Bernadette, the computer voice announced that engine
shutdown would occur in five seconds.
"Four, three, two, one, shutdown."
The engines cut off with an abrupt series of popping sounds, followed by the whir of the
rotor bearings spinning freely. Though nearly frictionless, they would impart enough resistance
to slow -- probably over a period of hours -- the rotation of the ærodynamically unimpeded
blades. The weight crushing the spacefarers instantly ceased.
"Free fall!" Crockett shouted with a joyous war-whoop. "We're in orbit!"
Bernadette quickly checked her screen to confirm. "We sure are!"
"I think I'm going to be sick." Friedman turned five shades of green from the weightless
sensation.
"Told you to go to Coney Island more often!" Crockett pulled a blister pack of pills from his
spacesuit and floated it over to Friedman. Sam frantically punched out a Bonine motion
sickness tablet and chewed. Crockett turned to Bernadette. "Anyone else?"
For an instant she hesitated pridefully, then looked at Friedman, turned toward the buckskin
medic and thrust out her gloved hand.
"What now?" she asked after washing the pill down with water from one of the drinking
spigots. A droplet of clear liquid broke loose and drifted away from her in an undulating
globule. She laughed.
Crockett pulled a tissue from his pocket and touched it against the blob. It attached to the
paper like an attacking amOba and instantly vanished into the fibers via capillary action.
"It's no time for dumb astronaut tricks, I can tell you that." Crockett called up a screen on
his monitor. "We've probably put the fear of God in everyone down there. They may not believe
Carla's ground-based transmission. By now, the Chinese may think the US is messing with
fractional orbiting bomb systems again. Publicity will be our best defense against itchy trigger
fingers."
Crockett flipped a few switches and the image of Carla Pulaski appeared. She sat at her post
in flight control, where the party was going strong.
"Davy! I've got Davy, guys!" She turned back to the screen. "We've
gotten through to GSN and they just agreed to an exclusive patch. Ready to feed?"
"Ready." Crockett tried to smooth his wayward hair. His cheekbones felt strange and his
sinuses throbbed with an unfamiliar pressure. He stared seriously at the cigarette-sized
videocam mounted over his control panel.
"People of Earth... Greetings!"
He broke into a wide grin. "I've always wanted to say that." Toning the grin down to a
hearty, boyish smile, he said, "My name's Davy Crockett. I and two others have departed Earth
in a spacecraft of our own construction. Our intentions are peaceful, and the rights to our story
are available for a negotiable sum."
***
Crockett's image overwhelmed the center NORAD screen.
"We hereby claim the half-billion dollar prize offered by the Experimental Spacecraft
Association, deliverable upon our safe landing twenty-four hours from now."
The equally massive right-hand screen mapped the flight, now indicating the ship's orbital
track. On the left screen appeared a growing number of small picture fields depicting news
services worldwide as each picked up the story.
Gen. Dorn spoke on a red telephone handset. "Yes, Mr. President. The transmission really
is emanating from Low Earth Orbit. This does not appear to be a hoax. You saw what it did to
New York." After a long pause, he said, "No sir, we don't anticipate any military threat... well,
that's NASA's problem, if I might say." He paused and mentally counted to ten. "No sir, we
have no way of getting them down short of sending up a shuttle to retrieve them or shooting
them out of the sky." Another pause to listen and fume. "Then I suggest, sir, that you speak to
your campaign spin doctors to divine which response will win you more votes!" He slammed
the handset back into its red cradle.
Proceed to Chapter 46
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