Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (31 page)

But as soon as he placed his full weight on the floor of the air duct, the thin, unsupported sheet metal flexed with a loud "WHONG!" which seemed to reverberate to infinity, down the dark depths of the vent shaft. Both men froze, as the sound died off into the distance.

"Shit," Anders breathed finally.

"What he said," Crash murmured. "Be careful."

Chapter 19

"I really don't believe this," Anders emitted the ghost of a chuckle as they crawled through the air tunnel. "It's like something from a bloody James Bond movie, I swear it is."

"As long as we have Double Oh Seven's luck with the case, suits me fine," Crash whispered back. "I just hope we can get out without making tons of noi--"

He broke off, both men falling silent, as voices floated down the duct.

"Captain, do you have the report ready?"
The voice had a distinct, heavy Russian accent.

"Yes, sir. Anytime you are."
Young American.

"Good. Report to me in my office in half an hour, then. You can fill me in on how our captives are doing."

"Wilco, sir."

Their eyes met. Crash leaned forward and breathed into Anders' ear.

"Found it, Bond."

* * * *

In order to avoid making noise in the flimsy duct, the two men had to travel much more slowly than they would have liked. Still, as they progressed, they were able to hear the chit chat of the two officers, now discussing the scheduling of meetings for the most part. Crash had hopes that they would soon return to the discussion of the "captives," and provide clues to their location.

Suddenly a bright, momentary flash caught Crash's peripheral vision, drawing his attention, and he glanced up. "Shit," he breathed, as he noticed a tiny opening in the ceiling of the duct. It was from that opening that he had seen the flash. He glanced down. A small, polished metallic disc was set in the floor, directly below the opening. If Crash glanced at the disc out of the corner of his eye, a specular glint was just visible. "Yup," he confirmed, only loud enough to be audible to his companion.

"What?" came the ghost of a familiar voice from behind him.

"Laser," Crash answered in kind. "Sensors in the vent."

"Shit," Anders answered.

"Yeah."

"How will we…?"

"Let me think."

They sat down in the metal tunnel and waited while Crash puzzled his way through their obstacle. Suddenly his eyes lit up, and a soft grunt escaped him. Reaching in his pocket, Crash produced his polished money clip. Anders raised his left eyebrow, watching.

Crash removed what few bills remained, stuffing them into his pocket. Then he laid the clip down on the floor of the duct, near the polished metal disc. Carefully, slowly, he nudged it forward, using averted vision so that he could see the reflection point of the almost invisible beam. One last, swift push positioned it. "There," he whispered.

They waited. And waited.

Nothing happened.

Then he grasped it gingerly between fingers and thumb, and began to lift it toward the roof of the duct.

"Hope it isn't motion sensitive," Anders breathed his tension.

"Me, too," Crash murmured. "But in an air conditioning duct, with all the air flow, I wouldn't think it'd be calibrated too sensitively."

"Good point."

When Crash had the money clip held close to the roof of the duct, he scootched as close to the side as he could get. "C' mere."

"Huh?"

"I need you to hold this while I get past, then I'll hold it for you."

"Oh."

Anders got himself as close to Crash as he could, and positioned himself to have a free hand to hold the clip steady. "Hey, there, big boy," he murmured, batting his eyes in a joking, suggestive fashion at the other man.

"Hello yourself, sailor," Crash grinned, and eased himself by Mike, being careful not to so much as brush Anders' arm. Wordlessly, he set himself, then reached up to take the clip from Anders, nodding for him to get past the sensor. Anders gingerly squeezed past the larger Murphy, and nodded in reply.

Crash eased the money clip back to the floor, then jerked it out of the way. Again they waited, and again, nothing happened.

"You're good at this," Anders murmured.

Crash shrugged, secretly pleased at the praise. "Not top-notch. But I had a little training, back in the day. Not too shabby, I think. About six months' worth of solid prep and training, all told. Military was gonna send me on a classified mission into…" he paused, wondering if the matter had been declassified yet. "Um, into some places where an American military officer wouldn't have been welcome, at all. So they got me ready to do some literal double-oh-seven stuff."

"Aha. So you were gonna be a spy."

"The brass prefers the term, ‘military intelligence.' It's not always an oxymoron, ya know, Mike."

"Hush," Anders snapped in an undertone. "I hear conversation again."

"Quick, then," Crash breathed. "Let's find the voices."

* * * *

In the nearest security monitoring station, a green light flickered red for a moment, then resumed its normal green glow, as a message flashed up on a computer screen. "Hey, Jack, we got another transient on Sensor Charlie Victor Four," one of the guards called.

"Again?" Jack replied, bored. "That thing goes off all the time lately. Probably rats; there've been some reported in a couple ‘a the rooms near there. They get in through the air ducts from the old installation, then crawl past the fan blades when they're on the off part of the duty cycle. I keep telling the scientists not to leave their lunch scraps lying around, but they never listen."

"Shouldn't we investigate?"

"Nah, I've investigated that one enough for any twelve people," Jack remarked, disgusted. "I'm sick of it. Put in a maintenance report on it and let it go."

"Wilco."

* * * *

The pair inched along the duct following the voices, until they came to a vent into a corridor. Crash and Anders stayed well out of sight of anyone in the corridor. The conversing officers, just on the other side of the vent, were completely unsuspecting of the eavesdroppers in their midst.

"Is it time to move the prisoners again?" Russian asked.

"No, sir," American replied. "They're still in Wing Bravo for now. Orders came down to vary the duration of stay, as well as location. They'll be there another week, per the current schedule."

"Very good, then."

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking…"

The superior's tone softened. "Go ahead, Dynamo."

"Well, sir, you can probably already guess the contents of my report."

A sigh. "Yes, Dynamo, I think I can."

"All seven of them, sir. So… what happens if they just… won't?"

"They will, soldier." The officer's tone was stern. "One way or another, they will."

* * * *

After the officers left, Anders and Crash carried on a soft conversation of their own, seated in the cold sheet metal duct work.

"Okay…" Crash murmured, shocked and surprised to the point of lightheadedness.

"Okay what?" Anders wondered.

"They're… HERE." Murphy stared in shock at his companion.

"The shuttle crew?!"

"Yeah."

"HERE?!" Anders fought to keep his voice down in his shock.

"Yeah, looks like it."

"But… but I thought they were…" Anders struggled to mentally shift gears. "I thought the aliens had ‘em? I thought we were just coming here to get information…"

"I thought so, too," Crash agreed, his wide, somber eyes bespeaking his troubled confusion. "I thought the cover-up was about the fact that the aliens had kidnapped ‘em, tit for tat on our having aliens, alive or dead. But it's beginning to look like our own guys did the kidnapping."

"That opens up a whole new can of worms, mate." Anders stared at Murphy in horror.

"I know," Crash murmured, still struggling with his roiling emotions. "This just doesn't make any sense. We've got an alien spacecraft sighted by the shuttle instruments, and then the aliens abduct the crew for seeing them. Next there's a big cover-up by humans on humans; then we find the crew held prisoner in a secret underground Earth base--run by humans?" He shook his head, and Anders saw the movement in the faint light from the air conditioning louver. "Does that mean that our government--make that governments, plural, I guess--are working with an alien race?"

"I… I dunno, mate," Anders answered, uncertain. "Maybe we aren't quite as… free… as we always thought we were? Maybe it's like that movie, and there's really aliens running the governments? Or maybe the governments have to report to the aliens?"

Crash shook his head. "No, it makes no sense. There's no evidence of that. There's gotta be something we're missing. Why would humans get bent out of shape because a shuttle spotted hostile alien spacecraft? I'd think they'd be glad of the warning."

"Unless…" Anders pondered, brainstorming, "…unless it wasn't really an alien spacecraft."

"What do you mean?" Murphy wondered, furrowing his brows.

"Well, Crash, how much do you know about Area 51 lore?" Mike quizzed his friend. "Tell me what you've heard. Never mind the fact we know most of it isn't true. It may have been, once, and now be true for here instead. So keep that in mind."

Crash shrugged. "Okay. Ultra-secret government installation," he ticked off on his fingers. "Nobody gets in or out without really high level permission. Hangar 18 was supposed to be where they keep the stuff from the Roswell crash, and maybe a few others. It produces incredibly advanced aircraft, and is rumored to build air and space--" Crash broke off, starting to see where Anders was leading him.

Anders nodded encouragement. "Keep going."

"…Rumored to build spacecraft," Crash continued, a light dawning in his mind, "which get tested in the area regularly."

"And if you had access to salvageable debris from a downed alien spaceship, what would you do with it?" Anders pointed out.

"Figure out how it works, then build one my own damn self," Crash said in grim satisfaction. "Retro-engineer. Just like they did."

"The people that are into watching for such as this," Anders told him, "dubbed the thing ‘Aurora,' according to what I was able to find on the web, before you showed up. I'd almost forgotten about the bloody thing."

"So there really is an advanced spacecraft from… all this," Crash waved his hands about them, encompassing the underground facility.

"That'd be my guess, mate," Mike shrugged. "Which means…"

"Which means, our own people are trying to keep the thing under wraps, and they're willing to kill to do it," Crash noted, expression ominous.

"Looks like it," Anders agreed.

"Which makes me wonder now," Crash considered, "how long all of this has been going on…"

"What do you mean?" Anders queried.

"All those space disasters," Crash pointed out. "
Challenger
, and the original Tethered Satellite flights, and
Mir
, and Station… what if it was really these guys? We don't know how long this operation has been running. What if it even goes back…" He paused, a thought occurring. "If you're right, it could go back, in rudimentary form, all the way to the Roswell incident. So… what if even Apollo-1 wasn't an accident? Not to mention some of the Russian disasters…"

"Shit." Anders was silent for a time, pondering the import of Crash's train of thought. "What I'd like to know is why."

Crash thought for a moment. "You know, it still could be a war. Either coming, or already here. That could be the reason."

"I suppose," Anders considered. "But you'd think they'd let NASA in on it, let ‘em help."

"Well. Only one way to find out," Murphy decided, shaking his head.

"And how's that, mate?"

"Find Jet--or maybe one of the other crew members--and ask him. I'd bet my last thin dime Jet's gotten every bit of information out of ‘em he can squeeze, without getting in dutch for it. He'll know what there is to find out."

"So we have to find Wing Bravo, and then we should find them."

"Yeah."

A pause.

"Crash?"

"Yeah?"

"What did he mean, ‘they will'? They will… what?"

Crash shrugged. "Go along with these bozos. Give ‘em info. Do a mission for ‘em. Who knows? Something like that, anyway."

Anders nodded, thoughtful. "So… now what?"

Crash met Anders' eyes. "Start looking."

"Like we haven't been, already," Anders grumbled as they started to move again.

* * * *

Blake sat alone in his quarters, getting very, very drunk. His job was done for the time being, although after the meeting, Haig had sent an aide back to the conference room for him. The aide, in turn, brought him to Haig's office.

"Steve," the air marshal had said, "first off, let me congratulate you on a truly outstanding job. What you've done is groundbreaking, historic work, and once all this goes public, I intend to make certain you get full credit for it."

"Thank you, sir," Blake had told him. "I appreciate that more than you know. I want you to know, though, something that I wasn't exactly able to say in the meeting. No one in there really wanted to hear the margin of error on my calculations, and as a scientist, that makes me very uncomfortable."