Back to the Moon (48 page)

“Like what?”

“I don't know, Jack.” Penny sighed. “I guess he'll want me to bare a little of my soul. That's something men don't know much about. But I'll think of something. Maybe I'll say I can't wait to get out of this little aluminum box with two sweaty men who haven't had a bath in a week and smell like it, and a cat—one Paco Fuzzy-Wuzzy Black and White Creature—who forgets to cover up after himself after he uses his zero g litter box.”

Paco pinned his ears back at the mention of his name. Penny suspected he knew complaining when he heard it.

Jack stretched. “Well, I think I'm going to miss old
Columbia
. She's been a good old girl.” He patted the console in front of him. “She's the best damn spacecraft ever built.”

Penny studied him. “Is that all you'll miss? This big machine? What about me?”

“Well, I was kind of figuring you'd still be with me.”

Jack's placid expression told her nothing. “That's news to me,” she said.

When Jack seemed to suddenly turn mute, as if realizing he'd said more than he meant to say, Penny hummed her deduction that he was fearful of commitment, cleared her throat, and continued reading:

“Messages have been coming in, both over the normal loops and the SAREX. The one that most touched me was from the chief of the East Coast Council of the Cherokee Nation. I have been made a full member of the tribe and have been asked to address the council in the fall. I'll be there! America Control has passed along dozens of offers for me to speak. I was most surprised by the number of pro-space groups! Have I found a new constituency?”

“I bet there's more wanna-be astronauts than anybody knows.” Jack grinned.

She ignored Jack and kept reading. “I continue to monitor the cell culture experiment although any results that I see are now suspect, considering the number of accelerations that have been placed on them. The lamb and frog cell accretions have stopped growing, probably due to the lack of space in the chamber. I still do not know if I have accidentally found a way to grow nerve cells into nerve tissue, but the possibility is definitely there. There is no question, however, that my mistake has generated a lot of interest. It is all so exciting. I look toward earth and hear her sweet call.”

Penny closed her logbook. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Jack asked.

“What did you think of it?”

“I think it's amazing how you can put two sentences together, and have them make sense. Like most engineers I never could do that very well.”

“Maybe I could teach you,” she offered. When he didn't immediately respond, she added, “Maybe, Jack, there's a lot of things I could teach you.”

Jack turned to her, put his hand on her cheek. She nuzzled it against his fingers. “Yes. If you took the time.”

She held his hand to her cheek. “If you gave me the time.”

He petted her for a moment and then dropped his hand, went back to studying the earth. “If I could save time in a bottle,” he began, singing the words of the old Jim Croce tune. Penny laughed and joined him, offering him her hand. In a spacecraft perhaps unable to avoid headlong, destructive impact into the dense air of the planet they were hurtling toward, Penny High Eagle and Jack Medaris sang, holding hands, their voices joyfully drowning the pain and hurt that still racked their hearts, of dreams and wishes that might yet come true.

MET 12 DAYS AND COUNTING . . .

THE SOYUZ

Cosmodrome launchpad 12-D, Kazakhstan

“Let's go!” Ollie Grant yelled as the deep rumble of the engines igniting far beneath her rattled her barely cushioned seat aboard the
Soyuz-Y
space capsule. The rocket engines sounded like a gigantic popcorn popper about to overflow.

Yuri Dubrinski laughed and started a running commentary in Russian with the ground controllers. Ollie laughed with him. Grant had just spent the best few days in her life, absorbing the quick lessons from Dubrinski on piloting the crude little spacecraft, while keeping out of harm's way. There had been occasional gunfights just outside the housing area of the ugly, bone-dry Cosmodrome, but the vodka and sex had been great!

At least the Russians were good at getting their rockets off on time, Grant thought, but that was about as much credit as she was going to extend their way. Two nights before, she'd been on her way to the communal shower, a thin towel over her shoulder, when the first gunfire had broken out. She'd thrown herself to the linoleum floor while doors burst open all around her and men and women, some naked, others in various pieces of camouflage uniforms, ran up and down the hall. One of the naked men carried an AK-47 submachine gun, kicked open a door beside her, and ran in, blasting through the window. While Grant crawled back to her room, she heard the sound of breaking glass, the rattle of machine-gun fire, and insane laughter. Her room stank of burned gunpowder and for the rest of the night she heard the whimpering of someone apparently wounded just outside the fence. Dubrinski told her the next day that the Kazakhs had tried to storm the building. It was a form of eviction notice, he'd said. It seemed the Kazakhs had heard the Russians were getting a slug of hard currency for launching Grant into space and they wanted their share. A Russian paratroop battalion was stationed at the Cosmodrome for protection and they liked nothing better than shooting Kazakhs.

Even that morning she had heard sniping around the perimeter as she took the lift up to the
Soyuz-Y.
Before the booster was out of sight, Dubrinski told her, Russian airplanes were going to be swooping in to pick up the paratroopers. The Cosmodrome was going to be abandoned. Russia was opening another, far to the north and east.

Grant felt the g-forces building, an unfamiliar stress during launch. Space shuttle astronauts usually only took three g's at launch, and then only briefly, but the booster was powering up to give her five g's, perhaps more as each stage dropped off and new engines fired. She heard the noise of the first stage engines die away, the vibration in the capsule subsiding.

“Get ready,” Dubrinski said.

“Get ready for—?” She was going to say
what
? but never got the chance. Somebody in the capsule hiding behind her swung a baseball bat as hard as possible into her back. At least that's how it felt.
“Oooomppph!”
is what came out of her mouth. The second stage blasted away. The crude switch panel in front of her turned into a shaken blur. Grant gritted her teeth, hung on. She cursed Carl Puckett. What the hell was she doing on board this made-in-Russia Spam can, anyway? Puckett had surprised her with a visit briefly in Baikonour, brought her presents, promises, cajolery. The only part she believed was when he told her she was a patriot for undertaking the mission. Puckett had been fuzzy about the rest, citing secrecy. He'd seemed to have completely forgotten the tale he'd told her once, about the nuclear weapons on board and the homegrown atheist or religious nuts, take your pick. To her credit she hadn't laughed in his face. She was going for her office and all the astronauts. Whatever was happening aboard
Columbia
wasn't right and she was going to stop it.

A stowage box above her flew open, dumping a heavy flashlight on her head. “Owww!” she yelled at the sudden pain.

“You are okay?” Dubrinski yelled over the noise of the engines.

Grant held the flashlight, started to swing at him with it out of frustration and anger, but the g-forces kept her arms pinned. Then, the engines cut off. She lunged against her shoulder harness. “I'm fine.” She gasped, rubbing the welt on her head and slapping his hand away when he reached across with concern.

“Get ready,” he said again.

“Oh, jeez!”

“Third stage ignition,
now
!” Dubrinski yelled happily.

“Oooompppph!”

Moscow

Carl Puckett was enjoying the serene, cool quiet in the special VIP box overlooking the
Tsup,
the Russian version of Mission Control located in a deteriorating concrete building in the Moscow suburb of Kaliningrad. He was wearing a fox fur coat down to his ankles, and a sable hat so huge and fuzzy, it looked as if he had three dead animals sitting on his head. Beside him, hanging on his arm, was a blowsy blond woman in a tight red polyester dress, who had been given to him by his new best Russian friends. Her name was Livia and as long as he kept her properly filled with vodka, he had discovered she would do anything for him, however kinky. Puckett had never properly shaken out his kinks, he thought, and Livia was the perfect young lady to help him in that regard. He especially liked it when she wore her schoolgirl uniform with the badges that had Lenin's face on them.

On Puckett's other side stood a huge hulking man named Boris. Boris was wearing a black suit cut from wool cloth as thick as baloney slices. Boris was the other person assigned by Puckett's new best friends, the ones who had picked him up at the airport and explained the facts of Russian economic life to him, how a man such as Puckett with money could have nearly anything he wanted in Russia, especially if he was properly appreciative of those who gave it to him. Puckett liked his new best friends. They treated him with the respect he had always thought he deserved, especially after he explained how most of his money was safely in a numbered account in Belize. Yes, he'd be appreciative, at the time and amount of his own choosing. A man, especially a rich one, could do well in Russia, he was starting to think. When he looked back at Washington, D.C., and especially at the attorney general, now the vice president, who was after him, Moscow and its young blond women were looking very good indeed. Still, the Man, the former vice president of the United States, had given him a job and he'd built his reputation on doing whatever job he'd taken. And this was for the January Group after all. Vice presidents came and went but the January Group was forever.

A patter of applause from below broke his reflective spell. “What's happened, Boris?”

“The
Soyuz
is in space, Carl,” Boris rumbled with a voice that sounded as if the Moscow subway were bottled up inside him.

“That is very good.”

“Carulllll,” Livia squealed, “shall we play now?” She swung a big cloth bag out to show him. “I brought my nurse uniform.”

Puckett gave Boris a look. The huge man's face was like a bulldog's, so full of flabby folds, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. “Hold down the fort, Boris?”

Boris fingered his earpiece. “There is a back room.” He looked down, as if embarrassed. “It has a couch, some chairs... vodka.”

“Oooooh!” Livia grinned. She said something in Russian that Puckett took to be lascivious to Boris. Boris showed no reaction, only held his arm out to show them the way.

Space

“I'm going to kill whoever thought this up when I get back,” Grant snarled, taping a bandage to her forehead. She slapped Dubrinski's hands away again. “I don't need your help!”

Colonel Dubrinski eyed her. “Olivia, I am sorry. But don't fret. We will rendezvous with
Columbia,
assess her needs, and escort her back to earth. It will be a glorious mission.”

Grant shrugged, gave him a smile. God, he'd been good in the sack and she'd needed that, desperately. “You are right, of course, Yuri. We will save the shuttle. And all the world will rejoice.” She sighed, touched her forehead. It still hurt. She allowed herself a little misery and then got busy. This time she was going to make certain
Columbia
would not survive.

A CALL FROM SAN ANTONIO

Columbia

Jack sat in the cockpit, took Sam's call. “Jack, there's somebody down here who'd like to talk to you. He's not here in Mission Control. He's actually in San Antonio. He's been begging and I think it's the right thing to do.”

Jack heard the name. “Frank Bonner? Sure.”

“He's pretty sedated, Jack. He was burned over fifty percent of his body. He has a lot of therapy to look forward to. Guess you know something about that.”

“Put him on, Sam.”

Jack listened. The voice was weak but it was Frank. “Jack, I want you to know how sorry I am—”

“Save your strength, Frank. Whatever you did, you did it because you thought it was the right thing to do.”

“I have to know... did you find her letter?”

“Yes.”

“And was it... ?”

“Wonderful? Yes. It was everything I'd hoped... and more. I'm afraid it didn't make it back, though. It's still on the moon.”

Jack could hear Bonner's voice catch as if a wave of pain had struck him. Jack very well knew how that happened when you were freshly burned, how suddenly it felt as if somebody was stripping off your skin. “Take it easy, Frank.”

“Do you remember... any of it?”

“Yes.”

“Would you... ?”

Jack closed his eyes, took a deep breath. He could see the notebook paper clearly, and every word on it. He started to recite and as he did, he could hear Bonner sobbing.

“But I know something, even now
that I wonder if you know even then.
It is that I will always love you
And that I will always be with you
Across space and time.
You see, didn't I send you a message all the way to the moon?”

MONTANA (5)

Perlman's Plant

The new vice president loved helicopters, loved their versatility, their design, the powerful sound of the
whop-whop
of their blades cutting through the air. The only thing she hated about them was riding in them, had an inbred sense that it was impossible that they flew, that they were always a thin cable's width away from disaster. Her face was a frozen expressionless mask but its paleness betrayed her fear. She kept her eyes on the back of the two pilots' helmeted heads as their UH-1 Montana National Guard helicopter banked sickeningly and came in low over the knoll that overlooked the fusion reactor site. “There it is, ma'am,” one of the pilots called back.