Back to the Moon (15 page)

Grant caught Bonner's eye and he nodded to her and then crooked his finger. She reluctantly approached him. “If I call on you, go ahead and give your pitch. If I don't, we'll wait for a better time. Do you understand?”

Grant started to argue, thought better of it, and nodded. When she went back to her seat, Carling looked over his shoulder, gave her a sardonic smile. She ignored him. There was nothing funny about any of this. She should have been in space, not cooped up in a cabin on a mountaintop in Maryland.

There was a stir at the door and Grant saw a tall, thin, and nearly bald man enter the room—the veep, as he was popularly known. With a perpetually puffy, pasty face, framed by a smartly cut white beard, Vice President Vanderheld wore a brown corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows. Grant thought he looked more like a friendly old English professor at a junior college than a vice president. Grant recalled that he'd been a senator for practically forever from some western state
—North Dakota?
She wasn't sure—and had taken second place on the ticket after the President's first choice had been knocked off for some obscure campaign finance scandal. Vanderheld apparently was considered safe by the politicos because he had no presidential ambitions of his own. He was too old, for one thing. Most people in his party figured he'd leave when the President did, at the end of his almost assured second term. Still, he was a beloved old guy. Grant remembered a poll she'd seen that named him the most popular man in the government, even more so than President Edwards. A career of passing laws that gave largesse to poor people was obviously a very popular thing; trying to shut down NASA didn't hurt, either, she thought sourly. Still, like everyone, she respected Vanderheld. He seemed to have a conscience, which was more than most politicians had, she supposed.

When Vanderheld finally stopped shaking hands, he eased himself into a seat at the table and tapped the mike in front of him. The few remaining hairs on his head blew wispy and white in the light air from the air-conditioning ducts overhead. “Before we begin, I wish to make a general statement,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice. “As you know, the President is preparing to fly to Iraq to broker a peace treaty between Iran and Iraq. This treaty will bring peace and stability to a region of vital strategic interest to the United States. As you may know, I, too, have a high-priority situation on my plate: the Senate vote on the World Energy Treaty next week. WET, along with the end of the war in the Middle East, is required for the continuing prosperity of this country and peace across the world. Now we have this situation, which may divert the people's attention from these two great endeavors.”

Vanderheld put on his glasses, scanned the executive summary that each participant around the table had been given. He shook his head, took his glasses off, looked around the table with disgust clearly etched on his face. “President Edwards has given this council the responsibility to address the issue of the hijacked space shuttle. He hasn't asked us to find out how this hijacking happened or why. I know you'd all like to talk about that. So would I.”

The assembly laughed. Vanderheld smiled, very briefly, put his glasses back on, and tapped the report. “Like you, I've wondered why in heaven's name would anybody want to hijack a shuttle? What could they possibly want with it? Blackmail, perhaps? Ransom?” He shook his head. “Nothing makes sense. In any case, the Justice Department is looking into that. Our charge is to give the President options on how to bring the space shuttle home, and in short order. So I'm going to need some suggestions.” He nodded toward Bonner, who grimly nodded back. “I'd first like Frank Bonner of NASA JSC to bring us up to speed on the situation.”

Bonner made his remarks sitting down, his hands flat on the table before him. The situation was unchanged, he droned, since the day before.
Columbia
was in a high orbit, 558 nautical miles, at an inclination of 28.7 degrees. An eyewitness had identified one of the men aboard
Columbia
as former astronaut Craig “Hopalong” Cassidy, who had apparently been shot by one of the hijackers. It was not known why Cassidy was on the launch tower. A garbled conversation with Dr. Penny High Eagle on downlink had established that she was on board the shuttle with probably two or more hijackers and that Cassidy was probably dead. “Mission Control in Houston continues to monitor
Columbia
downlink,” Bonner said. “As far as we can determine without communication with whoever is on board, the shuttle is in good shape. We continue our analyses, sir,” he said, folding his hands to indicate he was finished. “I will forward you any conclusions we reach as soon as I have them.”

Vanderheld acknowledged Bonner's report, told him he'd done a good job, and expressed respect for the employees of NASA. Grant sank deeper into her chair. It was crap, eyewash. The proof of that followed with the next thing Vanderheld said. “Unless somebody can convince me otherwise, I believe this crisis requires a military response. Therefore, I've decided the Air Force should take front and center.”

Grant started to rise in protest but Bonner caught her eye, gave her a short, negative cut of his head. She subsided, fuming.

General Carling looked around his assembled colonels and majors and then leaned over his mike. “Well, sir, I guess the question Air Force Space Command needs to ask is what do you want done with
Columbia
? If you want us to shoot her down, we can do that. Well, I take that back. We can blow her up but she won't come down. She'll stay up there until her orbit degrades. That might take some time.”

The door opened and Grant saw a man enter. Some members of the group started to rise to greet him, but he used both of his hands to signal them back down. Whoever it was was a sharp dresser, Armani all the way. Grant thought he looked like a fox, sharp faced and cunning. He was also wearing what was clearly a very bad wig. The hair on it was so dense and solidly black that it looked like the fur of a dead animal just come out of a dye vat. “Bernard Sykes,” she heard one of the Space Command weenies say. “White House chief of staff.” Sykes found a chair directly behind the vice president, a toothy grin on his foxy snout.

“Perhaps you should skip to the bottom line, General,” Vanderheld was saying. “What do you recommend?”

“Well, I wouldn't blow
Columbia
up, sir,” Carling rasped. “It's pretty valuable American property and we have one of our own aboard.”

“Dr. High Eagle,” Vanderheld said. Grant seethed, her gut a knot. Neither she nor the astronauts of STS-128, the second all-female shuttle crew in history, had been officially recognized by the gathering. Now they were talking about High Eagle, a mere payload specialist, as if she were the only one of them who mattered!

Grant wanted to get up and make an announcement, get everybody in the room squared away. They just didn't understand. She had ridden her people hard, pushing them through simulation after simulation, honing them for instant response to her orders. Then, without even asking her what she thought about it, NASA headquarters had decided to put a usurper on her crew. Penny High Eagle's presence had completely offended Grant before she'd ever met the woman. As far as Grant was concerned, High Eagle had shamelessly used her ethnicity and sex to capture a string of dubious distinctions—the first Native American woman to go to the South Pole (she had posed topless for photographers at the Amundsen Station), to climb Mount Everest (dragged, Grant was certain, by about a dozen stout Sherpas), to visit the
Titanic
(she had stayed clothed for her submarine ride, at least)—the list seemed endless. Every adventure had resulted in either a book or an article. Although the Astronaut Office in Houston had fought to keep such self-promoters off the shuttle, High Eagle had taken a different approach to get into space, convincing the giant pharmaceuticals that sponsored most of her adventures to purchase her a payload-specialist seat under the flimsy pretext that she would perform a cell culture experiment.

“How about some options, General?” Vanderheld asked, snapping Grant back to the meeting.

Carling had been dithering, consulting with his other officers. “Well, sir, like I said, we can send an ALMV—that's an air-launched minivehicle—and bust the shuttle wide open,” he said. “Or, my personal favorite, we can leave
Columbia
alone, wait these guys out.”

Vanderheld glared at Carling. “Unfortunately, neither of your options is politically viable, General,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The press is already out there stirring everybody up. The American people will want this solved in short order without anyone getting hurt. We can't wait and we can't blow the shuttle up. I need something better.” The vice president rested his head in his hand. Grant thought he looked tired or maybe he was just disgusted with having to deal with the situation. “Suppose you damage the shuttle with one of your missiles, just enough to make it come down?”

Carling conferred with the colonel behind him. “No, sir, at least not with any certainty. The shuttle and the AMLV are high-energy vehicles traveling at five miles per second. If they hit each other, it's going to be like smashing two eggs together. The crew cabin is pressurized at one atmosphere. You crack that cabin in the vacuum of space, whoever's aboard wouldn't survive. And as I said before, nothing's going to come down. It'll just be debris in orbit. Bodies floating around up there for a long time. Public relations is not my line, but somehow I suspect we would be criticized if that happened.”

Vanderheld scanned the room, stopped on Bonner for a moment, and then moved on until his eyes lit on Grant. “Colonel Grant? My condolences to you and your brave crew. As the second all-woman crew to fly into space, you would have represented this administration's continuing efforts to insure a multicultural and nonsexist society.”

What a sack of politically correct shit,
Grant thought. She looked at Bonner, who nodded back. This was her moment. She'd better make the best of it. She stood and cleared her throat before speaking. “Thank you, sir. My crew trained long and hard for their flight and would have performed in an outstanding manner.” She left it at that. Grant was not a speechmaker. She was a pilot and an engineer. She got right to the point. “One thing you should know is that NASA has the ability to land the shuttle automatically; but the crew aboard must release manual control for the autopilot system to work.”

“Is there a way to talk to Dr. High Eagle back-channel?” Dr. Bill Carmichael, the CIA rep, interrupted. He had a degree in aeronautical engineering, Grant recalled.

“High Eagle is a payload specialist—not a real astronaut. She hasn't been trained on shuttle systems, so talking to
her
wouldn't do us a lot of good. But that's not what —”

“Not an astronaut, Colonel?” Carling chuckled, looking slyly over his shoulder. “She's in space, ain't she?”

Grant refused to take Carling's bait. Carling knew that only members of the astronaut corps in Houston were allowed to have the title, a distinction NASA had made for three decades. You could spend a year in space, but if you weren't from NASA Houston, you weren't an astronaut. She took a deep breath, not wanting to get into that, and looked at Vanderheld. “Sir, I propose to take space shuttle
Endeavour,
rendezvous with
Columbia,
board her, and bring her home.”

A rumble of voices rose in the room. Vanderheld leaned forward, his rumpled jacket rising off his neck. “Can you do that, Colonel?”

Grant's eyes glittered. “You bet your sweet. . . Yes sir, I can. We've got
Endeavour
on Pad 39-A almost ready to launch.”

A woman stirred at the end of the table. “What about
Endeavour
's payload?” she demanded. “It's a pretty important piece of hardware, a node for the Space Station.”

The woman's nameplate identified her as Betty Velasquez, National Science Foundation. Grant had anticipated the question. “We'll put the node in orbit first, ma'am, then rendezvous with
Columbia.
All we need is to give the Cape permission to prep
Endeavour
early and get her off the pad.”

Velasquez looked doubtful. “
Aurora
is in a fifty-one point six-degree inclination.
Columbia
is”—she leafed through the executive summary—”twenty-eight point seven degrees. How can you possibly drop the node off at the station and then chase
Columbia
? I doubt that you'd have adequate propellant reserves.”

“Yes, ma'am, we're aware of that,” Grant said. “We'll drop the node off in a parking orbit. The next shuttle up will rendezvous with it and then move it over to the Station.”

“Yes,” Velasquez said icily, “delaying the node's arrival by at least several months, and requiring an additional shuttle launch. Every launch of the space shuttle is very important, considering the likely possibility of their not being replaced after they wear out. I thought you of all people would know that, Colonel Grant.”

The room fell silent. Grant's cheeks were burning with outrage at Velasquez's tongue-lashing. “I would suggest we start negotiations with the hijackers, Mr. Vice President,” the CIA chief Carmichael said, breaking the hush. “If Cassidy was part of their team, and all indications are that he was, they probably can't proceed with their plan without him.” He looked at Grant. “Colonel Grant, no one has more admiration for the astronaut corps than I, but I think what you're suggesting is too risky.”

“May I suggest a demonstration?” It was the Navy Space Command representative, an admiral whose name tag said his last name was Lockhart. Grant didn't know him. “Don't hit the shuttle with the AMLV but come damn close,” he advised. “Shake them up and then demand they let us automatically land the shuttle.”