Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

“Hello Mark. I’d like you to listen
very carefully. First, it’s Captain Grey, United States Navy, I’m not some
fucking plumber from Arkansas. Second, I’ve been trying to speak to your boss
for two months and I’m plumb out of patience. Now you get him on the phone –
and I mean
now
– or I’m gonna fly down to Washington tomorrow morning
and call a press conference on the front steps of the Dirksen Building and
embarrass the living bejesus out of you. Am I making myself clear?”

There was a short pause before Mark
responded. “Quite clear, Captain. Hold on a minute.”

A minute later Senator Landers came
on the line. “Captain Grey? Dick Landers. What can I do for you?”

“Senator, it’s a pleasure to
finally speak with you. You, as the whole country probably knows, are the
government’s foremost proponent of our space program. But your visions for
space exploration have been tabled and pigeonholed for a number of reasons, but
mostly revolving around budget and partisan politics. I’d like to help. I am
not a nut, not a publicity-seeker, and what you heard on the news this morning
is not a hoax. It is anything but. I am dead serious about this. And if I am
successful, I believe it will open an entire new era of U.S. manned space
exploration, which just happens to be right up your alley. Senator, I’d like to
meet with you and prove to you beyond any reasonable doubt that we are serious,
that this can be done, and that we
are
going to do it.”

“Captain, I had the Secretary of
the Navy send me over a copy of your service record this morning. You’ve served
this country for longer than I have, and you have done so faithfully, honorably
and in what I can only imagine is a very hazardous job. I guess I owe it to
you. When and where?”

“Though I’m sure it would be more
convenient for you for us to come down to Washington, I believe you’ll get much
more out of it if you come to us up here in Rhode Island. Then we can show you
everything: plans, mock-ups, every last detail.”

“Very well. When?”

“At your convenience, sir. We have
a jet, we’d be happy to fly you, even put you up for the night, if you’d like.”

“Would a weekend work?”

“That would be excellent, sir.”

“Alright. How about next weekend?”

“Perfect.”

“Alright, Captain. I’ll have my
travel secretary contact you and make the necessary arrangements.”

“Thank you Senator, I sincerely
appreciate your time.”

“Okay. Then see you next weekend.
And, Captain, don’t hold it against Mark. He was just doing his job.”

“I know sir, just as you’re doing
yours and I’m doing mine. The game has rules. Right?”

“That it does, Captain. Good day.”

“Good day, Senator.”

Jeff hung up the phone, leaped out
of his chair and ran downstairs. When he hit the lower level landing he yelled,
“All hands on deck! Everyone. Office. NOW!”

Only Abby was in the main office.
“Jeez, boss! What’s up?”

“I’ll explain. Just hang on a
minute.”

Gabe, Susan and Chrissie came
running in. “What is it?”

“Okay, listen up. I just got off
the phone with United States Senator Richard Landers, ranking minority member
of the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee. Hold onto your butts, he’s gonna
be here next weekend and he’s gonna want a complete and thorough explanation.
And we’re gonna give it to him.”

Abby’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Chrissie, Abby, we’re gonna
fly him up in the CJ3, figure out where the hell we can land down there.”

“Okay.”

“And Chrissie, his travel secretary
will call to make arrangements. And he’ll be here for the weekend. Roll out the
red carpet, make sure we’ve got rooms available and ready, plenty of food and
drink, blah, blah, blah. Handle it.”

“Got it.” She sighed. “Oh God.”

“Gabe.”

“Huh?”

“SRT has a rover up and running,
right?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it here before next weekend. Let’s give the
Senator a real live demonstration of something he can lay his hands on that
we’ve actually done. Hell, let him drive the damn thing.”

“Okay.”

“Chrissie, help her with the
arrangements.”

Chrissie nodded.

“I don’t care what it takes,
charter a 747 cargo if you have to, but get it here.”

“Okay.”

“Sue, get some suits from ILC
Dover. They’re not gonna want to part with them, but we need ‘em. Call Paul and
make him understand. It’s crunch time, okay?”

“Right.”

“And Chrissie, call in all the
troops. Get the house cleaned, the pool cleaned, the lawn mowed… you know the
drill.”

“Relax, boss. Take a pill. I’ve got
it.”

“Yeah, sorry, just a little wired.
Boys and girls, we can’t ask for a better ally than this. We
need
to
make a good impression.”

They all nodded.

“Alright. Five o’clock, update
meeting in the conference room. Move like you have a purpose.”

Promptly at 5:00 they all met again
in the conference room. Everyone looked more than a bit frazzled. Jeff rapped
the table with his knuckles. “Busy day? Chrissie, why don’t we start with you?
How do we get the Senator up here? Any airports down there we can fly into?”

“Not many. Reagan is open on a
limited basis to general aviation, but I think flying to Mars will be easier.
They allow 48 GA flights a day, but they have to originate from one of 24
‘gateway’ airports around the country. And, no, Quonset isn’t one of them.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“And – and here’s the part you’re
gonna love – in addition to a full background check of crew and passengers,
you’re required to have an armed federal agent on board.”

“Jesus! You’re kidding?”

“Nope.”

“God. Bureaucrats, you gotta love
‘em. How about Dulles?”

“No GA. There’s Baltimore, but it’s
a ways away. Best bet looks like Manassas. It’s about 30 miles southwest of
D.C. Lots of GA and, according to AirNav, 27 jets based there.”

“Runways?” said Abby.

“Uh, 16 left – 34 right is 5,700
feet, 16 right – 34 left is 3,700 feet.”

“Okay, no problem. ILS?”

“Yeah, 16 left.”

Abby turned to Jeff, “Works for
me.”

“Yeah, me too. Okay, Manassas it
is. Chrissie, have you talked to the Senator’s secretary yet?”

“Yeah, didn’t have much for her
when she called. I promised to get back to her with complete details by
tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay. Well, let’s have complete
details by then. See if you can find some ground transport. How about a limo or
something? Find some executive service that knows the routine. The Senator
probably has his own transportation, but let’s have a backup just in case. Did
she say who might be coming with him? God I hope we don’t need a bigger plane.”

“Just the Senator, his Chief of
Staff and executive secretary.”

“No Secret Service?”

“They didn’t say anything about it.
I don’t think a mere Senator warrants Secret Service protection.”

“That’s a relief. One less mouth to
feed.”

Chrissie grinned. “Yep.”

“No wife or anything?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Chief of Staff, huh? Crap,
that’s Mark Chambliss, the twerp that’s been giving me the runaround for two
months. He may need killing. Abby, it’d be bad form for me to do it. Would you
mind?”

Abby grinned. “No problem.”

“Thanks, I’ll let you know. Uh,
once Chrissie has final details, flight plan’s your responsibility.”

“Got it.”

“Chrissie,” Jeff raised his hands
and motioned to the house, “what about this place?”

“All set. Spring cleaning on
Thursday.”

“Good. Gabe, Rover One?”

“It’ll be in Boston Wednesday
afternoon on a FedEx cargo flight, and they’re sending it on its trailer. We
just need to drive up and get it.”

“Excellent.”

“It wasn’t cheap.”

“I didn’t think it would be, but
it’s worth it.”

“We’ll need to fuel it.”

“Okay, well there’s got to be a gas
farm around here somewhere. Find somebody that has liquid CO and LOX.”

“Don’t need to. Roger says it’s
multi-fuel. All we need to do is adjust the mixture and it’ll run on CO,
methane, propane, even LNG.”

“Cool.”

“And we don’t need LOX. It won’t
run on atmospheric oxygen, the mixture is too far off, but plain old medical or
industrial O
₂
will work fine. There’s even a separate fitting for it.”

“Outstanding.”

“Just remember, it’s a prototype.
It’s kind of rough but it should easily provide proof of concept. And Roger
says it runs great. But he would like it back. It’s got his test engine in it.”

“No problem, just as soon as we’re
done with it. Good job.”

“Sue, suits?”

“Paul has two for us; a second
generation I-Suit that fits me and a Mark III that should fit the Senator.”

“Good thinking! How’d you find his
measurements?”

“I called and asked.”

“D’oh. Well done.”

“We just need to go down and get
them. They’ll be in shipping containers, and heavy. I don’t think we can get
them in the plane. They’ll go through the door but they’re too big for the
aisle.”

“Alright. Well, see if they’ll fit
in the Escalade. If not, we’ll just rent a truck and go down there.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, stands? PLSS ready to go?”

“They’ll have stands ready for us. Charged life
support packs will be with the suits.”

“Very good. Well, that’s the easy
stuff. The fun part comes next – getting
us
ready. We need to anticipate
every possible question, and have a good answer for each. So first thing
tomorrow let’s try to work out a presentation, a plan of attack. Let’s try to
keep things structured in our favor and minimize the awkward tangents. Okay,
anything else?”

Chrissie raised her hand. “I am way
behind on returning calls, faxes, emails, etc. With everything else I’ve had to
do today, it’s been a mess.”

“Understood. Don’t worry about it.”
Jeff looked around the table. “Any volunteers to help Chrissie get all those
media queries answered?”

“I can,” Susan answered. “I’ve
probably got a little less prep work for this event than Gabe and Abby.”

“There you go. Oh, while I think of
it, one other thing: start putting together your shopping lists for the
government. At this point I don’t want to ask for money, though we’ll get to
that eventually. But think about services that Uncle Sam can provide that may
be of use to us that the taxpayers have already paid for. Stuff like the Deep
Space Network, satellites, either communications or photos, like HiRISE while
it’s still working. Any launch services, communications interfaces to here, I
dunno, whatever. Just think about it, make a list.”

They all nodded.

“Okay then. I’m hungry. Let’s get
some dinner. Who’s cooking tonight?”

“Me,” said Susan. “Szechwan shrimp
stir-fry.”

Abby’s eyes lit up. “Does hot sake
go with that?”

“You bet.”

“What are we waiting for?”

Around nine the following morning
Jeff bounced into the office downstairs and found Abby at her desk.

“Morning boss. Where have you been?
You were up and out early.”

“Flight lesson.” Jeff grinned and
handed her a folded piece of paper.

“What’s this?” She unfolded it and
jumped out of her chair. “Alright! You’re licensed! Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Finally got my ticket
punched.”

“Well done. So now you don’t need
me to haul you around anymore.”

“Yeah, right, only if I want to
travel in a single-engine Cessna. And you know that ain’t gonna happen.”

“How are you coming on the
instrument rating?”

“I’ve been working on it at night
and I think I’m about ready for the written exam. Cindtronix has a 12-day crash
course in the hands-on portion, but lord, I just don’t know if I can devote
that amount of undivided attention to it. Still, it’d sure be nice to just get
it done; and it includes the complex and high performance endorsements.”

“Eh, you could manage that. We can
hold down the fort for that long, though probably not this week.”

“No, definitely not this week. Hey,
I found a really neat C90GTi for sale in Illinois.”

Abby wagged her finger at him.
“You’ve been shopping online again, haven’t you?”

Jeff smiled. “Guilty as charged.
It’s a 2008 with around 450 hours, Collins ProLine 21, like new leather
interior. It’s sweet.”

“Well, let’s go buy it. You could
be flying it in a month or two.”

“I’m sorely tempted, but they’re
asking $3.1 million. Seems like an awful lot of money for a mid-size turboprop.
Gonna have to think about it. So, what are you guys up to?”

“Just trying to get our ducks lined
up for this weekend. You know, it’d sure be nice if we had a little more than
two suits and prototype rover to show him.”

“Yeah, but what? After only four
months on the job, it’s unreasonable to expect too much.”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmmm…” Jeff thought for a minute.
“I have an idea.”

“Uh oh.”

“Where’s Gabe?”

“In the conference room, where she
usually hangs out.”

“Hang on.” Jeff stuck his head out
the door. “Gabe? You have a second.”

“Yeah. Be right there,” she called
back.

Jeff turned back to Abby. “Call
Chrissie and ask her to come over too.”

“Okay. Sue’s not here.”

“Yeah, I know. I ran into her up at
Cindtronix, she took off just after I finished up.”

Gabe and Chrissie showed up at the
door. “Hey, gather ‘round, I have an idea. Abby and I were just talking about
trying to come up with some other stuff to show the Senator. Obviously we’re
not gonna have any more hardware, there’s just no time. But some reasonable
graphics and imagery might go a long way toward filling the gaps. Gabe, how’s
your expertise with the CAD program?”