Chapter 26: Kings of the High Frontier CHAPTER 26 The biggest mistake we have ever made was putting SRB's on the shuttle. -- Dr. Max Faget (ca. 1978) 16 March The morning dawned clear and cool. Any day less than balmy reminded Lundy of the frozen morning when Challenger died. This morning, though, he paid scant attention to outside temperature. Inwardly, he had hit his own boiling point. "Don't reroute me!" he yelled into the telephone. "I want launch director Geddis and I want him now. We've got to hold the launch until we can recycle the ignition sequen--" The distinct click of the call transfer caused him to curse. A new voice spoke on the other end. "Marshall Space Flight Center," it said. "How may I direct--" "Damn!" Lundy slammed the phone down. His stomach churned. It's happening again. As if nothing's changed from before. He gazed at the computer simulation on his workstation. Something in the new programming was causing a dissynchrony in the two boosters and he had no idea what it was. The only answer was to stop the launch. He faced a battle as uphill as a launch into orbit. With nearly seventy successful launches since Challenger, the agency was more complacent than ever. All the changes instituted by the Rogers Commission had gradually unraveled over time, all in the name of increased efficiency and cost-cutting. A line engineer such as Lundy -- for a few years able to access launch directors without interference -- once again saw layers of bureaucracy and chain of command laid between him and fire control. He seized his windbreaker and rushed out of the building. Perhaps if he barged in on Launch Control physically... Igor Svoboda saw him outside and shouted. "Jack! Meet my mother, Tanya!" The woman beside him looked like a recent arrival to Ellis Island, all wrapped up in a dark wool coat with a wine-hued, moth-eaten wool scarf wrapped numerous times around her throat. Her grey hair hid beneath a black and white polka-dotted babushka, the gayest item of clothing she wore. Her hands lay deep within the recesses of an aged muff that may once have been mink or fox. It looked stiff and old, yet regal and warm -- very much like its owner. "No time," Lundy replied. "I've got to get to Launch Control. Bastards won't let me get through on the phone." "What's wrong?" Lundy looked physically ill. "It's Challenger all over again, Iggy. I've found a glitch and I can't convince anyone of it. The whole damn' chain of command is committed to the launch." "That's because of the UNITO guys they're taking up. A big show of solidarity." "Solidarity!" Tanya muttered in a thick Slavic accent, embellishing the word with a dry spit at the end. "We can still hold at T-minus thirty minutes if I can convince someone that there's a problem." Lundy disappeared into the crowd of workers and gawkers milling about between the buildings. His worst fear was realized when he reached the launch control center: his security badge would not admit him during countdown. Out of breath and weak-legged, he nonetheless ran to a telephone booth on the far side of the structure. He punched in the number for Hayes Polysulphide in Utah. Arguing his way up from operator to management, he made a quick introduction and explained Constitution's problem. "So it's not a problem with our boosters?" the voice on the other end asked. "No," Lundy said with clipped speed. "But a dissynchronous ignition will destroy them just as thoroughly." There was a silence on the other end, followed by, "Then I think you ought to take this up with your division head." "They're ignoring me here! I need someone higher up to reach the Launch Dir--" A click ended the conversation. "Oh, Jesus," he whispered. "Christ, you bastards." The choking inside grew more profound. T-minus thirty-five minutes. Still time. They could stop it at T-minus ten seconds -- hell, T-minus one second ,-- if he could just break through. His legs pumped like a sprinter's as he raced back to his office. Out of breath, he collapsed in his chair and grasped the phone. It was his only hope. He called the off-site company that wrote the program. The team leader there insisted that there was no problem, that Lundy's simulation hung up because of system incompatibilities between his workstation and the actual launch computers. For a moment, she almost convinced him. He wanted to believe that, but could not allow such a comforting thought. The lives of eight astronauts were at stake. The beauty of the morning was lost on Lundy, but not on the thousands of VIP's who crowded the viewing stands. For many of them, members of the National Organisation of Space Supporters, this was the culmination of years of effort. Finally, NASA and the United States put aside all nationalistic interests in the space program and instead aimed at a higher, more worthy goal: the unification of humanity under a single banner, to be taken to the stars by Constitution. Though some may have balked at the choice of shuttles -- the Constitution, after all, was considered (in not so many words) an archaic nationalistic document of capitalist white male domination arrogating to themselves the all-inclusive phrase "We the People," -- the irony of it pleased others. After all, now the United Nations Charter would be the fundamental foundation of humanity's future on other worlds. One personage was notably absent: Barry Gibbon, founder of NOSS and author of the Interplanetary Treaty watched the launch from his seminar at New York University, a superb photo op for the attending news media. The highest ranking US government official present -- Vice President Schield -- spoke of the importance of a shared tomorrow in Space. "For the future," he said over the loudspeakers and television cameras, "belongs not to nations and to governments, but to the people of all the Earth. It is in their name that we humbly, and with reverent resolve, take this small jump into space, that a far greater leap to our home in the stars may someday be possible. And it is with a unified, single purpose that we move forward -- slowly, cautiously -- to test the new waters of this infinite ocean in the hope that our children and grandchildren will touch the dream that we can only distantly envision. Thank you." The applause was light and respectful and rang as hollowly as his amplified words did over the tinny loudspeakers. The audience preferred to save their awe for the launch itself. Also in the bleachers sat dignitaries from the United Nations. Ambassadors, mostly, with a handful of heads of smaller states who still gloried in whatever recognition they might receive from the globe's last remaining fully certified superpower. Beside them lounged several astronaut-hosts and invited guests such as congressmen, senators, governors, and large contributors to President Crane's upcoming campaign. Most dressed lightly against the cool mid-March morning. Spring was just around the corner, but a cold front descending through the Midwest threatened the launch with high-altitude winds. Jack Lundy prayed for a weather hold. In that, he was disappointed. His phone calls to Launch Control went unrouted. He tried circumventing the chain of command by calling over to Johnson Space Center. No good. Johnson took over after launch. He called an old friend at Dryden. He was on vacation. In desperation, he called Vandenberg. "Hello," he said. "My name is Jackson Lundy. Please connect me to my son, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Lundy, U.S. Space Command. This is an emergency." "One moment please." It took a hell of a lot longer than a moment. "Dad?" the deep voice at the other end asked in a querulous tone. "Alan! I'm at my wit's end down here. We're at T-minus eighteen and I can't get through to anyone that there's a glitch somewhere in the ignition sequence for the SRB's. I keep coming up with a dissynchrony that doesn't show up when they run it on the mainframe." "Have you checked your pc for--" "Christ, son, I need your help! You're in charge of making sure the trajectory is clear--" "Not any more." "Well, you've got to have some sort of hotline to the launch directors. Maybe if we both go at it from two directions one of us--" "I'll do what I can." "Thank you." Lundy pressed his thumb against the cradle switch and lifted it. He knew his son would do everything in his power. He looked at the computer screen. T-minus seventeen. There was still time. * * * Igor Svoboda and his mother were not VIP's. Except for the astronauts, no NASA employee was allowed to take up space on the hard metal benches that accommodated the posteriors of the world's élite. Instead, they took Iggy's car several miles in another direction to park on the NASA Causeway that runs between the Cape and Merritt Island. "Will we see it from here?" Tanya asked. "Can't miss it." "What about your friend's worry?" Her son shrugged. "I gave up long ago any concern about NASA. I do what I'm told and I do the best job I can. The astronauts know that they're sitting on the largest non-atomic bomb in the world. They all remember Challenger. I can't butt my head up against Fate." "Fate!" She made that spitting sound again. "Fate is the cry of a svolotch . You know what is a svolotch?" Iggy smiled. "I helped grandfather fix cars. Diddi never minced words." She nodded firmly. "A svolotch gives up and blames Fate." He glanced at his wristwatch. T-minus twelve. * * * Lundy's phone rang on the second line. He switched over from being on hold to take the incoming call. "Dad. I got through to Washington." "Great, Alan." "Not great. They told me to route it or they can't consider it a legitimate request to hold." Sweat stung Jack's forehead. "We've only got ten minutes!" He made an instantaneous decision. "I love you, Alan. Tell your mother I love her too." "Dad? Dad!" Lundy put the phone back and ran from his office. In his haste, he knocked over his coffee cup, which shattered on the black and white linoleum. He paid no heed. Outside the office, he glanced at the huge countdown display in the distance. With less than nine minutes, his only hope to put a hold on the launch was to violate launch site security. Lundy's knowledge of the spaceport, gained over decades of working at KSC, served him well. He knew where to find holes in the fences, ill-maintained areas of high brush. He had to remain out of sight in order to penetrate deeply enough. Then he had to become visible, so unrelentingly visible that a security-breech hold would be placed on the countdown. At his age, though, he wondered if he could make it. He was two miles away from pad 39-A. He only needed to be within a mile of the pad to be seen on the surveillance cameras. It put him well within the danger zone from the blast of liftoff, so they would hold the countdown while conducting his arrest. His legs pounded across the pavement and into the brush. Cranes squawked as he burst through their dominion, stumbling now and then over the uneven, marshy soil. He discovered that one hole in the cyclone fence had recently been repaired. There was another one, though, a few hundred yards away. Under the gap between the hole and the dirt below, he pulled and wiggled. T-minus four minutes. The wide service road that led toward the shuttle launch pads lay five hundred feet away. He scrambled toward it, grass and gravel sliding around under his shoes. A terrible pounding thundered in his head with every wheezing breath. Not too old, he thought, I can make it. Racing up the crushed limestone that composed the wide shuttle roadway, he saw the surveillance camera mounted on a tall, slender pole a hundred feet away. T-minus two. Still enough time. He sprinted toward the launch pad with renewed energy, though his lungs and legs threatened to give out. His heart pounded like a turbopump and his vision tunneled until all he could focus on was the camera. He drew near and began to shout, waving his arms. "I'm out here. Security! Hold the launch!" What Lundy had no way of knowing was that the surveillance camera in front of which he gestured had been disconnected three weeks before in anticipation of a new replacement that would have been installed on a post thirty feet farther down the road. The replacement had been held up at the Port of Los Angeles along with ten thousand metric tons of electronic equipment from Singapore in a dispute over recently re-imposed tariffs. T-minus sixty seconds. "Come on, come on!" Lundy continued to wave. Then he heard the klaxon. Turning around, he gazed toward Constitution. "Son of a bitch," he said, wheezing as he sat wearily on the white, sun-warmed limestone gravel. "First goddamn' launch in twenty without any holds." At T-minus thirty seconds, he began to laugh uncontrollably. "They must be proud," he whispered. "They must be so goddamned proud." He could not hear the countdown from Launch Control, but he could tell from the sudden cascade of water roaring into the depression at the base of the pad that -- at T-minus eight seconds -- he had no time left. He took a deep breath and thought of Melissa. She'll think I was the biggest fool who ever lived. Then he smiled. Maybe her friends'll have me cloned. At T-minus six seconds, Lundy watched in awe as the liquid-fueled ssme's ignited. He counted, just the way he did with Florida lightning. By the time the gut-rumbling roar hit him, the twin SRB's ignited, apparently in unison. Constitution edged a few yards upward from the launch pad amid a white cloud of solid-fuel smoke and steam. Lundy watched in wordless amazement as it tilted sharply over to point straight toward him. Dissynchrony! He marveled as the colossal beast turned on its side and roared toward him, nosing into the marshland, the ET crumpling like tinfoil. It was his last living thought. Cryogenic liquids erupted from the mass that cartwheeled across the roadway toward him. In a heartbeat, the hydrogen and oxygen mixed; rocket exhaust ignited the half-million gallons of fuel in one single, devastating explosion. * * * Staring at computer readouts, oblivious to the roiling disaster, the woman at Launch Control performing the countup said, "We have liftoff. Liftoff at twenty-six minutes after the hour. Constitution is clearing the tow--" Then the information on her screen turned to SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS indicating static. In utter shock, she looked up at the main video screen. The viewers in the VIP bleachers knew within an instant of ignition that something had gone catastrophically wrong. Only the astronaut-hosts, though, knew the impending totality of the disaster. The right SRB fired first by only a fraction of a second. By the time the left engine ignited, the shuttle had begun to yaw over. The eight explosive bolts holding the entire spacecraft to the pad separated on schedule, but by then the left engine nozzle, bent and crushed against the launch pad, pinched shut, building up enormous pressure instantaneously, adding no compensating thrust and only increasing the sideways rotation of the spacecraft. Constitution turned over with an agonizing shriek of metal lost in the volcanic howl of the tortured boosters. It twisted about and thrusted west toward the Vehicle Assembly Building. A mile away from it, the shuttle nosed over into the marsh. At that instant, the external tank spilled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen across the pavement. An instant later a fireball exploded like an atom bomb. The rising orange-white sun seared the flesh of everyone jumping from the stands and running madly about nearby. Then the shock wave hit them, blasting skin and muscle, shattering ears and bursting lungs, throwing bodies against buildings like bugs against windshields. No one there lived to see the final horror, as the crushed, unrecognizable debris that was once Constitution reeled out of the fireball, propelled by its own monstrous momentum, trailing a toxic cloud of hydrogen peroxide from auxiliary power units and nitrogen tetroxide and monomethyl hydrazine from its orbital maneuvering rockets. The SRB's broke apart at their four joints, each segment under its own power as the fire inside the cores burned uncontrolled. The bottom three segments of each SRB, lacking caps, vented their thrust in both directions. The top segments of either booster took off like skyrockets, one corkscrewing upward into the blue, the other screaming southward to burn out over Lake Okeechobee and crash into the Everglades. The others pinwheeled around the marsh like so many colossal fireworks, sending thick streamers of orange flame and white smoke across Merritt Island. Blown free from the boosters by the explosion of the ET, Constitution turned over and over, tumbling across the marsh like a rampaging beast, leaving scratch marks and deep furrows in the soil and limestone. Guided by its powerful initial thrust, it tore through fences and barriers to smash with irresistible force against the press and VIP bleachers, scattering aluminum tubing and human bodies like straws in a hurricane. Without slowing, the smoking ruins of the orbiter slammed into the Launch Control Center, penetrating it like a battering ram to expend the last of its kinetic energy against concrete walls and steel beams, shoving all aside until finally it came to rest amid the rubble and carnage, a flaming, charred mass of metal, plastic, and silicone tile. * * * "Oh God!" someone cried in The Heat Shield as the morning drinkers watched the Shuttle's vain attempt to lift off. "It's tilting!" The small clot of people viewing Ed Laird's big screen TV fell silent. Behind them rose a drunken snort that became weak, bitter, half-sane laughter. "Your Constitution's burning, America. Hope you're watching." Tammy raised her glass toward the infernal scene and downed the drink in a single chug. The laugh transformed into weeping and she lowered her head, matted sable hair splaying around the arm she wetted with sobbing tears. "'Bye, Samantha. That damn' pooch screwed you worse than it screwed me." The doors to The Ablation Room burst open. A handful of astronauts -- who had up to a moment ago been too jaded to watch the liftoff outdoors -- burst through to race back to KSC. None of them noticed Tammy Reis raise her head blearily to watch the swirling flames engulf the spaceport. None of them knew the secret comfort she drew from seeing the instrument of her violation reduced to cinders. Not one of them, in their shock and alarm, could have known or even imagined the emotions that warred within her knotted soul and rotted mind. Some of them, though, saw -- from the corners of their eyes on their way out the door -- a twisted smile on her pale, dry lips and the glint of vicious triumph in her dead eyes. * * * "Turn on the TV!" Haley screamed, slamming through the doors into Grant's office. Grant stared at him in surprise as Donahue instantly reached to switch on the wall screen. The lights automatically dimmed and the blazing images flared into view. "What is thi--" Grant began, then saw the silhouette of a rocket gantry amid the flames. "Constitution!" Haley cried, taking deep gasps for air. "It tipped over. I saw it hit a building. Look -- they're replaying it." The trio watched as the flames vanished, to be replaced by an intact Shuttle on the launch pad. The ssme's ignited and the entire spacecraft seemed to lighten, rising a perceptible few inches. Then the solid boosters lit and the ungainly assemblage leaned sideways and rammed into the earth, turning end over end. They watched from the safe, objective vantage of a distant camera as the ET fireball exploded, solarizing the video with incomprehensible candlepower. "My God," was all Joscelyn could say. It was just about all anyone watching could think of to say. She had seen the black and white film of the destruction of the Hindenberg, had experienced the shock as a teen of watching the billowing breakup of Challenger on TV while in class at school. Neither matched the heart-gripping nightmare of what she saw on the screen. When they saw the fiery remains of the orbiter emerge from the fireball to skid across the space center and smash into Launch Control, they fell into an inarticulate silence. The news network, as shocked and unprepared for this as anyone, wordlessly replayed the footage. They stared once more at a healthy Shuttle, only to see it collapse and explode yet again. Marcus Grant was the first to say anything, and he spoke in a tone that Joscelyn had never heard before. "The beast is dead," he said with an almost reverent whisper. "This changes everything. Chad -- go full speed ahead with the office complex in Kismayu. We're relocating ASAP. Jo-Don -- how is the crew coming along?" She only stammered, staring at the screen in fascination and dread at the awesome power of a rocket releasing its stored energy all at once. "Snap to it, Joscelyn!" Her entire body jerked as the command broke the hypnotic grip of the endlessly repeated image. "Um, we have twelve of the crew of twenty lined up for sure, I'm still scouting the rest. I've got my eye on a damned good pilot and co-pilot. We've assembled an American construction crew -- mostly ex-ærospace -- willing to relocate at the wages we're offering. Semi-skilled labor will be local Somalis. Management will be completely from Grant personnel. Slots are about sixty percent filled." Grant ran a hand through his grey hair. "Not good enough. Begin immediate move of all personnel to Somalia through the diverse routes we discussed. Establish a six-level paper chase of companies and dummy corporations. Make the company that interfaces with Somali bureaucrats appear to be a naïve bunch of humane Americans with a lot of foundation money to be sucked up by savvy officials." "How," Haley asked, "do you plan to hide construction of the station?" "Right out in the open," Grant said absently, gaze riveted on the screen. "The individual pods will be fabricated in Germany at an amusement park ride manufacturer -- they look like mini-theaters or some sort of enclosure. Then we'll ship them to Africa, switch the manifests, and they'll arrive as pre-fab housing. We'll even landscape the center of the ring structure. They'll believe dumb, good-hearted Americans would build a huge, expensive housing project in the middle of a starving desert nation. Happens all the time. Remember to ship them some grain for the army to steal off the docks. That'll keep them occupied. Begin an aggressive recruitment campaign for crew." He looked once more at the screen. Constitution cartwheeled once again through the grandstands and into the Launch Control complex. "Go ahead and query NASA personnel. The space program is dead and gone now. Any survivors will be ripe for whatever straw of hope they can grasp in their grief. Be careful, though. I don't trust any NASA stooge to be more loyal to Space than to the State. And that goes double for astronauts." He nearly spat the last word. "I'll... get on it." Donahue rose to leave. His last words threw her thinking off-track, and she required a moment or two to return to normal. "One more thing," Grant said. "Yes, boss?" Her voice held an odd, nervous edge that might have been expected under the circumstances, but that caused Haley to observe the tension between the two with an uncomfortable wariness. "Feed me a list of the dead as it comes out of KSC or Washington. Also compile a list of surviving NASA personnel from interviews, posted reassignment lists, et cetera. You'll be working that up in the course of your recruitment anyway." "Surely," was all she said on her way out. "What are you gawking at?" Grant snapped at Haley. "Isn't this what you predicted? Another catastrophe for NASA? They couldn't have suffered a more thorough destruction than this!" He pointed at the screen. "Pad 39A -- gone. Launch Control -- gone. Hundreds of top-level people -- gone. It's as if God's fist came down upon Cape Canaveral and crushed the infidels in holy fury." "Infidels?" Haley peered at Grant. The older man seemed suddenly to have grown young with an energy and fervor he had never seen before. Grant splayed his fingers across the desktop, gazing not at Haley but at the relentless video of the incineration of the space program. "You and I, Chad," he said, mesmerized. "We're puritans. We see the necessity of a stoic dedication to our chosen goddess. We are the zealots, the fundamentalists, the fanatics. They... they were the unfaithful, the moderates, the infidels who desecrated Space with spy satellites and war machines. They were the Pharisees who barred the true believers from the infinite temple, only to see the wrath of the righteous smite them with its terrible swift sword." He paused as if awakened in the midst of sleepwalking. Turning his gaze toward Haley, he drew his fingers up, tapped the desktop lightly, and said, "We have a precious few months now. The US government will be in total disarray over this, and UNITO has lost its only manned space fleet, and I don't expect the Russians to revivify their program in any reasonable time span. We can do this. Let's go." He once more exuded the impression of a man fully in charge. Haley nodded in agreement, despite the red alert that sounded in his pounding heart. * * * Davy Crockett and the others actually attended class that day -- Crockett had a perverse interest in sitting in the front row of Dr. Gibbon's Advanced Space Ethics guest lecture as the countdown progressed. Beside him sat Bernadette, wearing a black, fringed buckskin vest-top and matching Daisy Mae shorts and boots. Against the mid-March cold outside, she had with her a powder-blue one-piece ski outfit in a dripping heap in front of her feet. Sam Friedman flanked her on the other side, dressed in a heavy ghi and snow boots. The projection TV image of the Shuttle glowed on the overhead screen while Gibbon spoke of the mission's import. "Never before has the US space program carried so visionary a crew, nor so vital a cargo. Only three Americans on this flight: Mission Commander Vance Rader, Co-Pilot Jarrod Heinz, and Mission Specialist Samantha Madison. The other five represent an astonishing cross-section of world's space programs: Yohiro Tagawa from NipponSpace; Colonel Alain St. Jaques for CNES, the French space program; Dr. Marie Klausner representing the European Space Agency; Dr. Nikolai Gagarin -- no relation to Yuri, I understand -- from Russia; and as an indication of the new interplanetary order, Mr. Nguyen Trahn Phu, the new UNITO undersecretary and only the third civilian to fly aboard the Shuttle since Challenger over a decade ago. The new age heralded by such universal cooperation can only -- ah, here we go." The class quieted down as the launch entered its final seconds. Constitution crept upward, yawed over, and exploded into blazing debris. "Oh my God!" several voices cried out almost in unison. "This isn't happening," a girl in the back whispered. Friedman, unable to tear his gaze away from the screen, hoarsely said, "Davy!" "I see it." Crockett said in a calm voice. Bernadette clutched his arm with a terrified grip. "Davy. That could be us up th--" "No," he whispered, his voice harsh, his tone firm. "Don't be discouraged by the failure of that... elephant." Gibbon, staring upward at a severe angle from the podium, saw the screen flare with orange and white. "Oh my," was all he could say. "Oh my." Thin fingers touched thinner lips. He walked on unsteady legs toward one of the seats in the front row, only a few students away from Crockett and friends. Crockett turned to gaze at the professor. Gibbon's face had become an inscrutable mask after a moment of incomprehension, displaying neither shock nor agony nor any other emotion. He simply watched, quietly, eyelids partially narrowed as if they sought to block a truth from escaping -- or entering. * * * "Oh God, Gerry, look!" Sherry Cooper turned the small color portable toward her husband, at the moment deep within thought and gazing at his computer screen refining yet again the ærodynamics of Starblazer. Nearly every other aspect of the spaceship design was frozen, since work had begun at the subcontractors. The outer skin, though, he could still tinker with. He glanced up at the tumbling wreckage crashing against the building and instinctively tapped the keys that would save his work up to that point. He knew he would get nothing more done that day. "What happened?" he said. "It just tipped over." "Dissynchrony," he muttered. "Nothing could be worse than this." He shouted without turning his head. "Everyone! Constitution just blew up on the launch pad!" Gasps of shock were followed almost immediately by moans and sobbing. Many of his workers had been involved with space program or at least retained some residual fondness for it. For the next hour or so, they clustered around the TV set, watching the horror endlessly repeated, listening to the frantic voice-overs, the announcements of the names of the suspected dead, including the Vice President of the United States and his family, the wide-ranging speculation as to what went wrong, the dire predictions concerning the future of spaceflight. Cooper shook his head bitterly after an hour of it. Sherry put an arm around his shoulders. He pulled her closer and said, "I thought they would help us, and instead they used every trick in the book to freeze us out and scuttle our plans. I ought to cheer, but this..." He raised a hand and let it fall to his lap. "It's not good for anyone," Sherry said. "No one's going to put a cent into Space now. Not for years." "I will." The Coopers turned at the sound of the Brooklyn accent to see Leora Thane standing behind them, fists on hips. Her thick mascara was missing, wiped from her red, wet eyes. "You know why I started my travel agency? Because I love travel. Why? Because when I was a kid there was a TV show with this couple who traveled all over the world with their kid. I wanted to be that kid and get the hell out of New York and see the world. I've seen the world now, every part of it. I've seen the night sky draped by the Arctic lights in Alaska, I've seen the Southern Cross from New Zealand. I watched the Moon blot out the Sun in Baja and saw the planets align from Mauna Kea. I squinted at Halley's Comet in the Australian Outback and hunted meteors in the California desert. The Earth has been my backyard and now I want to jump the fence! Humans are nomads. We have been for a million years. Ask anyone what they would want to do if they didn't have to worry about money and they'll tell you -- travel. It's in our blood, in our genes. We can't fight it now that we've made the planet a sardine can. If we resist the urge, we'll go insane. We are going insane. As a race, as a people." She clutched her silver lamé handbag against her shimmering grey silk dress. "I'm a millionairess and while that impresses my family and old schoolmates, I know it's small potatoes when it comes to ærospace. I have connections, though. Billionaires. Real money. They may not have the courage to take a spin in orbit, but I guarantee you that their good-for-nothing offspring will badger them for a ticket if we just build the goddamned rocket." She took a deep breath, then sighed and gazed at Gerry Cooper with an uncharacteristic humility. She nodded toward the TV set. "You'll probably get bids from satellite companies, maybe even the military now, if you can get a working prototype built. All I'm asking is, if I invest in your company, that you make manned spaceflight one of your priorities. Pioneers are nothing more than uncomfortable tourists." Cooper smiled with genuine appreciation. "Thank you. I would do it anyway, but thank you." "Don't thank me," she said, regaining her composure. "Build the damned thing so we can gouge the bastards!" * * * A few hundred yards away, Larry Poubelle and Chemar D'Asaro hung upside-down with the sound of rending metal thundering in their ears. "Well, that's not it," Poubelle muttered, slapping the reset switch. The VR simulator rotated to place their fake cockpit upright. On their helmet goggles, the image of the Mojave Airport runway reappeared. Chemar reached out with her sensor-gloved hand to punch the appropriate buttons. The image quickly changed to what it would look like to sit in Nomad atop a 747 cruising at its operational ceiling. The sky above was a dark blue, the color of the deepest ocean at high noon. "Okay," Poubelle said. "Let's give it one more try before breaking for lunch. Launch to orbit, then jump forward to de-orbit and let's try not to skip out of the atmosphere this time." "Better than augering into Santa Barbara the way you--" "Larry?" a voice said in his headphones. "Yes?" "I'm porting a satellite feed to the simulator." The two saw the world suddenly explode around them, the flames and spacecraft fragments menacingly close. "Sacre merde!" Chemar cried. Poubelle watched the entire sequence play over once, then removed his goggles and gloves. "Robert Hutchings Goddard," he whispered, "thou art avenged." * * * Montgomery Barron stared blankly at the computer screen before him. A moment ago, he was patched in to an encrypted downlink from one of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites and now all he saw was a line consisting of nothing but the capital letter S marching across his screen until it was full. He checked the downlink. TDRS still responded, but the Shuttle did not. His interest in Constitution was more than just academic. The orbiter carried in its cargo bay a small experimental package -- one of many making the voyage -- that was part of an NSA black project; so black, in fact, that NASA was unaware of what it carried. For one second during the spacecraft's fourteenth orbit, the experimental device was to have sent out a pulse that would jam all transmission frequencies of every satellite within line of sight. The jam would be short enough, NSA hoped, to be interpreted as only a glitch by anyone monitoring, and would not result in any significant disruption of communication or uncorrectable interruption of data flow. The ability to destroy communication was as important as the ability to intercept and read it. NSA wanted absolute mastery of both abilities. Barron switched his monitor over to visual and saw an inferno sweep across the Florida marshland. He felt no horror, no loss. The emotion that filled Barron was one of cold anger. They've blown it, he thought. They've blown their only chance for hegemony. Without hesitation, he seized his phone and punched up Milton's office. "Are you watching it?" "Watching what?" Milton asked. "The Shuttle! It's gone! The U.S. has no space fleet. UNITO has no space fleet. Earth has no space fleet! I want top priority on Stark Fist and that means unrestricted funding." "You and every little corner of the agency." "The difference is that Stark Fist is the only project that can bring down the subnationals who'll take advantage of this tragedy." He heard a sigh on the other end of the line. "Run it through proper channels, Monty. Please." "Steve, this explosion"--he watched the numbing repetition of the disaster--"looks intentional. If I wanted to destroy NASA, I'd blow up a Shuttle on the pad in just that way. It took out the VIP seats and a whole building. NASA will never recover from this. They must have lost all their supporters in Congress and the UN as well as their top management! NASA's dead, Steve, and it won't be what it was. Ever. Meanwhile"--he flipped open a folder--"we're finding liquid hydrogen shipments moving from Ukraine to Libya and then vanishing, laser gyros from Israel intercepted on their way to South Africa, a plant under surveillance in Pakistan that's manufacturing chlorine pentafluoride and hydrazine -- that's what we're using! It's got the highest specific impulse of any storable fuel at three hundred-fifty sec--" "Monty, all those can simply be weapons manufacturing, and the CIA has means to deal with that." "Anything a missile uses, a spacecraft can use and vice versa." Milton's voice grew impatient. "You're interpreting information to suit your argument, which is an admirable trait under most circumstances. However, there are meetings where we can hash this out. Now, if you don't mind, I have two calls backed up and I'll bet they have to do with Constitution or something even more important. Goodbye!" He made a point of ramming the phone down with audible force. Barron did the same, but an instant too late for it to be heard on the other end. He leaned back in his chair and fumed. Without NASA to serve as the main instrument of spaceflight suppression and -- more important -- the main organization drawing enthusiastic spacefarers into a dead-end bureaucracy, those energetic dreamers will drift elsewhere. To places, perhaps, where they could not be monitored and influenced... or neutralized, if necessary. Then what? Then Stark Fist would be the government's only hope. The thought failed to fill Barron with a sense of pride, only with a feeling of urgent inevitability. He glanced at his watch. Today would be a good day to make a few calls to check on the status of the LEAP's, the Light Exo-Atmospheric Projectiles that would serve as Huntress's talons. Proceed to Chapter 27 Return to the Table of Contents