Back to the Moon (31 page)

“Yeah,” Grant said, clinging to the ladder. “Tell me another one, Carl. Then how come it didn't blow up when I took it outside into the cargo bay?”

“I don't know, Colonel. That's just what I heard.” Puckett took Grant's gloved hand. “Your country still needs you.”

“I gave it my best shot,” Grant said. “I can't do anything more.”

“Yes, you can.”

Puckett helped Grant to a waiting limo. Behind them the crew of
Endeavour
started to make the traditional walkaround but then said to hell with it and got into their air-conditioned van and slumped into their seats.

Grant let her head loll on the headrest, listening with her eyes closed as Puckett told her about the new plan. She finally opened one eye. “I thought you were my security, not my boss.”

“I'm not your boss, just a conveyor of a message. This comes straight from the top. The very top.”

Grant shook her head. She didn't have the strength to probe further. “This scheme is nuts. It'll never work.”

“The President of the United States wants it,” Puckett said. It never hurt to drop a big name. Actually, he had no idea what the President might want about anything at the moment and didn't care.

“Why?” Grant sighed.

“While you were in space we found out what the hijackers are up to.”

“Let's hear it.”

“They have nuclear weapons on board. They're going to swing around the moon, then make a suicide run on Washington.” It was the best Puckett could come up with.

Grant opened one eye. “Do they have a cause?” she asked dubiously.

“Radical right-wing religious nuts.”

Grant laughed. “That's horseshit.”

“It's what I was told but I could have heard it wrong. Maybe it was left-wing atheists. What difference does it make? They've got a nuke and plan on using it.”

“How'd they get a nuclear weapon on board, Carl? The lightest one I heard of weighs at least a half ton.”

“Ground crew put it there. They were part of the plot.”

“Radical right-wing atheist pad rats?” Grant laughed, shaking her head. “That I would like to see.” She subsided and became thoughtful. “Have you talked to the Russians?”

“They're waiting for you with open arms. You're money in the bank to them.”

“How do I get there?”

“Private jet all the way. Everything you need is aboard—clothes, toiletries, money, everything.”

“Whose jet?” Grant asked suspiciously.

“Charter outfit. They're expensive but they know the way.”

“You're certain this comes straight from the President?”

“He told me to tell you that if you pull this off, NASA is going to right to the top of his priority list in the budget next year.”

The limousine braked. Spotlights lit up a huge Boeing 747. Grant gaped at it. “Jesus Christ! How many people are going with me?”

“Just you,” Puckett said. “As soon you're aboard, you're off.”

“But this airplane can hold three hundred passengers!”

“We didn't have time to shop around. It's a little roomy, but you can stretch out anywhere you like and rest.”

Grant shook her head and tiredly dragged one foot after the other up the waiting steps. Puckett waited until the jet had roared off the runway, disappearing into the night. Then he called for his leased helicopter. He'd been told there was a man who knew how to kill anybody in space, even as far away as the moon.

ON THE WAY TO THE MOON

Columbia

For the first time since they had gone into space, the crew of
Columbia
relaxed. While some men slept, Penny sat in the cockpit, strapped into the commander's seat, one leg tucked under the other, and worked on her log:

What choice do I have but accept this journey? Medaris has lied to me every step of the way, and probably will continue. I don't blame Virgil. He has his reason, his little girl. He explained to me how Jack had covered all her medical expenses and the bonus of a million dollars stashed in a Grand Cayman bank would see them through all the doctors that followed....

That explains Virgil. But I keep wondering about Jack. Virgil told me all about this helium-3 business. I don't believe this is all there is to it. I know something about Medaris after all we've been through together. There's always something going on with that man, something he never says. What could it be? I'm determined to find out.

Jack used the time to study the stars with his binoculars and to simply contemplate all that had happened.

“Medaris?”

“What, High Eagle?” Jack asked harshly, pulled from his dreams of space.

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

He considered telling her the truth, but for some reason he just couldn't. “Right now I'm looking at the sensor reports. With Houston off-line, somebody has to do it.”

She hung from an overhead handrail, looking doubtful. “You know, sometimes it would be nice if you just came around and talked a little to me. Virgil and I have run out of things to talk about.”

“Is that so? What would you and I talk about?”

“I don't know. You always lie to me, so it's hard to tell.”

“Did you interrupt me just to pick a fight?”

“No. I'm trying to talk to you. You've kidnapped me and forced me to go to the moon, so the least you could do is try to be halfway nice.”

“I am being nice. I'm just trying to work right now.”

“I think you just don't want to talk.”

Jack shrugged. “Okay, High Eagle.” He opened his arms. “Talk.”

“You first,” she said. Then, at Jack's expression of disbelief, “What?”

“You said you wanted to talk, I said okay, then you said me first. That doesn't make sense.”

“That's it, Medaris,” Penny said. “I'm never talking to you again.” She headed for the hatch.

“Fine,” he said. He put his binoculars to his eyes. “Works for me.”

THE END OF A DREAM

SMC

Sam was called out of Shuttle Mission Control by John Lakey. There were three men with him. They were dressed in black fatigues with PUCKETT SECURITY SERVICES shoulder patches. “What now, John? I'm a little busy.”

“These are our contractor guards, Sam. They're new and so are my orders. Your team is disbanded. You are to leave the center until further notice.”

Sam flicked an eye on the guards. They were big and burly, pro linebacker quality. “John, the last time I heard, you weren't center director. Where is Bonner, anyway?”

Lakey acted as if he hadn't heard him. “The first thing we must do, Sam, is to make a transition in Shuttle Mission Control. I've called in more controllers.”

“John, anybody you call hasn't been properly trained. We know
Columbia.
She's our shuttle.”

“No, it ain't,” one of the guards growled. “It belongs to the hijackers.”

Sam ignored the guard, kept speaking directly to Lakey. “
Columbia
is still an American spacecraft, John. You're an astronaut, you know that. We have to be ready to assist her.”

Lakey looked distressed, bobbed his head. “I'm sorry, Sam. You're not getting any downlink anyway.”

“Get off this center, Mr. Tate,” one of the guards said, “and take your people with you, or we'll throw you off. That's our orders. Don't make us do something all of us might regret.”

Sam turned away. “I'm going to give Bonner a call.”

“Bonner's dead!” Lakey blurted, his voice cracking. “I just got a call from headquarters. Car wreck. Just outside Farley. Something else, too, Sam. They found papers on him. He's been draining JSC director contingency accounts for years, shipping it down to a bank in Central America. Looks like he was sending a ton of money to Russia, too, probably getting a big kickback. He must have been heading for Mexico. It's a mess, Sam. Congressional investigators are going to be in here like bees to honey.”

Sam frowned at Lakey's nervous deluge of information. “It don't change the fact we got a spacecraft up there, John. Somebody has to be here in case they call.”

One of the guards took a menacing step forward. “Time to go, Mr. Tate,” he said, his big lip curling down.

“For Christ's sake, Sam, do what the man says.”

Sam considered running to the SMC door and locking it behind him, but then he relented. He went back inside and looked over his brood. He felt a million years old. “Folks, I have an announcement....”

Tate's Turds looked up at their leader, their fresh young faces open and curious. For the first time in his life he was at a loss for words. He struggled for something to say that would make a difference but he couldn't do it. He had to say aloud what in his heart he believed. “It's over for us,” he said. “It's all over.” And he wasn't just talking about the SMC. It was America's future in space. Sam Tate, the best Flight director the agency ever had, was certain NASA was dead as a hammer.

Starbuck

Carl Puckett directed his limo driver to park in front of the Jetfire Arcade in San Jose, California, just off El Camino Real, the main drag. The store manager mulled over Puckett's request and then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Over there,” he said, chomping on an unlit cigar. “White coveralls.”

Puckett made his way through the din and turmoil of a hundred teens and preteens sitting at computer-driven games, thoroughly engrossed, their hands tight around joysticks or splaying reflexively at guide balls. A plump Oriental in a white jumpsuit sat at the controls of a large blue game-box. Puckett looked over his shoulder. On the monitor was a starship weaving through a belt of careening asteroids and alien warships. The man, an unjolly, intense Buddha, gripped two joysticks, occasionally jumping down to a guide ball in the center. The starship turned and rolled, darting this way and that as lasers slashed at it and massive planetoids crashed across the screen. A trio of preteens were watching admiringly to one side.

“Why doesn't he fire his lasers?” Puckett asked one of them.

“Man, Starbuck's way past that,” the girl said with disdain. “Anybody can blast rocks. He's fighting the machine, man.”

“But the object of the game is to shoot up things, isn't it? Don't you get points for that?” Puckett pointed at the score shown at the lower right of the screen. It said 0.00.

“If you're up to master and that's it, sure,” the girl said, her arms crossed and her eyes never leaving the screen. “Starbuck's a universal deity class. They play the game different.”

“Yes,” Puckett said dryly. “I suppose a universal deity might.” He was in a hurry, deity or no. He tapped the man on his shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. Starbuck? I need to talk to you.”

Starbuck ignored him and kept his hands flying from joystick to guide ball and back again. Finally, the screen pulsed into a rainbow of colors and then a hot white light descended abruptly to black. YOU... the screen said, ARE... GOD. The scene changed, the alien warships lined up in honor, a trackless road opening up that seemed to lead to the stars. There was a tinny trumpet fanfare. ALL HAIL.

Starbuck turned in his seat, squinting up through thick wire-rimmed eyeglasses. “Whatcha want?” he demanded.

“Norio Starbuck?”

“Depends. Who're you?”

“I'm Carl Puckett. I'd like to give you a job.”

Starbuck peered around the cluttered room, finally settling on the manager, who was watching him. “I have a job and it was damned hard to come by.”

Puckett laughed. “Custodian at a video game parlor? Scraping chewing gum off plastic seats? I believe I can give you a better job than that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The perfect job for a deity of the universe.”

Starbuck heaved his bulk out of the bucket seat. “Tell me about it.”

“Can we go somewhere I don't have to yell?”

Starbuck led the way to a cashier's booth where it was marginally quieter. “Okay. What's up?”

“What do you remember,” Puckett asked furtively, “about Project Farside?”

Starbuck studied him. “Everything. But who's asking?”

Puckett produced his fake White House and NASA identification cards. It showed him to be a “special consultant.” “Good enough for you?”

Starbuck studied the cards. “You're one of the bastards who shut us down.”

Puckett shrugged and then said, “What would it take to activate Farside again?”

“That depends. What for?” Starbuck asked suspiciously.

“Farside is needed for service to this country,” he said gravely.

Starbuck cocked his head, a gesture of suspicion. “With all due respect, Mr. Puckett, you'll have to be more specific than that,” he said. “Activating an old piece of hardware and software would be extremely difficult, take a lot of my time. I'm not sure it could be done, tell you the truth.”

“Too bad. You'd have made a lot of money,” Puckett said.

Starbuck grinned. “You got a car?” he asked eagerly.

Bingo.
“I have, Mr. Starbuck, a limousine.”

“Beats the bus.” Starbuck whistled between his teeth. “Hey, boss? Go screw yourself. I'm outtahere.”

The manager shook his head. “You'll be back.” He turned his attention to a balky game.

Starbuck slid inside the limo, kneaded the black leather seats, and hummed appreciatively. “Nice,” he said. At Starbuck's direction the limousine worked its way out of San Jose and onto the freeway to Sunnyvale.

Puckett sat in the seat opposite Starbuck and used a switch on the door to roll up the window between the passenger compartment and the front, sealing off their conversation from the driver. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, ready to tell the lie as he had been instructed. “We found out about Farside from one of your former managers. He's retired now and shall remain nameless. He called my employer for patriotic reasons, said Farside might come in handy considering the present situation with the shuttle. I was dispatched to look you up.”