Operation Moon Rocket (9 page)

"Why don't you finally face it?" snapped Sollitz. "There's no decent security possible if the contractors don't cooperate with us. And Connelly Aviation never has. Their policing system isn't worth a damn. If we were working with GKI on the Apollo Project we'd have a thousand extra security men to draw on."

"That's certainly the impression Simian is trying to get across," McAlester fired back. "Who exactly are you working for — NASA or GKI?"

"We may all be working with GKI yet," said Ray Finney. "That Senate-post mortem is sure to feature all the accidents that have plagued Connelly Aviation. If one more happens in the interim, a crisis of confidence will follow and the moon contract will be up for grabs. GKI is the logical successor. If its technical proposal is sharp, its bid low, I think NASA's top brass will overlook Simian's management and award the contract to them."

"Let's drop the subject," snapped Sollitz.

"Fine by me," said Finney. He turned to Nick. "What was that crack Simian made about playing your hand for what it was worth?"

Nick's mind rapidly considered answers. Before he could come up with a satisfactory one, Gordon Nash laughed and said, "Poker. He and Glenn had a big game when we were at his place in Palm Beach last year. Glenn must have dropped a couple of hundred — didn't you, buddy?"

"Gambling? An astronaut?" Ray Finney chuckled. "That's comparable to Batman burning his draft card."

"You can't avoid it when you're around Simian," said Nash. "He's a born gambler, the kind of guy who'll bet on how many birds are going to fly overhead during the next hour. That's how he made his millions, I guess. Taking risks, gambling."

The telephone rang just before dawn.

Nick reached groggily for it. Gordon Nash's voice said, Let's roll, buddy. We're leaving for Cape Kennedy within the hour. Something's up." His voice was tight with suppressed excitement. "Maybe we're going to make another try. Anyway, mum's the word, and I'll pick you up in twenty minutes. Don't bring anything with you. All our gear is packed and waiting at Ellington."

Nick hung up and dialed Poindexter's basement extension. "Project Phoenix is go," he told the man from Editing. "What are your instructions? Do you follow or stay?"

"I stay here on a backup basis," Poindexter replied. "If your field of operations shifts back here, this will be your base. Your man at the Cape has already set things up at that end. It's L-32. Peterson. He can be contacted through NASA Security there. Sight recognition is enough. Good luck, N3."

Buttons were pressed, levers pulled. The telescopic drawbridge drew back. The doors closed, and the mobile lounge moved on its huge wheels with slow and deliberate menace toward the waiting 707.

The two astronaut teams stood tensely beside their mountains of equipment. They were surrounded by doctors, project technicians and pad leaders. A few minutes earlier they had received a terse briefing from Flight Director Ray Finney. They now knew about Project Phoenix and that it was scheduled for lift-off in exactly ninety-six hours.

"I wish it was us that were going," said John Corbinet. "It's standing around and waiting that makes you nervous about going up again."

"Yeah, well don't forget we were originally the backup team for Liscombe's flight," said Bill Ransom. "So maybe you'll be going yet."

"That's not funny," snapped Gordon Nash. "Stow it."

"You had better relax, all of you," said Dr. Sun, unstrapping the constrictor from around Roger Caine's right arm. "Your blood pressure is above normal for this hour, Commander. Try to get some sleep on the flight. If you need them, I have some non-narcotic sleeping pills. This is going to be a long countdown. Don't tense up now."

Nick watched her with cold admiration. When she'd taken his blood pressure she had stared him right in the eye the whole time. Defiantly, icily, without once blinking. That was hard to do with someone you had just ordered killed. For all the talk about slick espionage agents, a person's eyes were still the windows of his mind. And they were rarely altogether blank.

His fingers brushed against the photograph in his pocket. He had brought it with him, intending to push buttons, to make things happen. He wondered what he would see in Joy Sun's eyes when she looked at it and realized that the game was up.

He watched her as she studied a medical chart — dark, tall, superbly beautiful, her mouth made up with fashionably pale .651 lipstick (no matter the pressure, the result was always a pink film .651mm. thick). He imagined her pale and gasping, her mouth distended with shock, hot tears of shame in her eyes. He wanted to shatter that perfect mask of a face, he suddenly realized, wanted to take ropes of her black hair in his hands and bend her cold and arrogant body back under his. With a rush of genuine surprise Nick knew that he wanted Joy Sun physically.

The lounge suddenly jerked to a stop. Lights flashed. An indistinct voice barked something over the intercom. The Air Force sergeant at the controls threw a switch. The doors opened and the drawbridge slid forward. Major Sollitz leaned out of the door of the Boeing 707. He had a battery-operated P.A. megaphone in his hand. He raised it to his lips.

'There's going to be a delay," he announced tersely. "There's been a bomb scare. That's probably all it is — a scare. But the result is that we're going to have to take the 707 apart piece by piece. We're readying another, meanwhile, over on Runway Twelve, so you won't be held up any longer than necessary. Thank you."

Bill Ransom shook his head. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Probably just a routine fail-safe check on security procedures," said Gordon Nash.

"I'll bet some practical joker phoned in an anonymous tip."

"Then he's a highly placed practical joker," said Nash. "In the top ranks of NASA. Because nobody below JCS level even knew about this flight."

That was what Nick had just been thinking, and it worried him. He thought back over the events of the previous afternoon, his mind reaching for that evasive little piece of information that had tried to make itself heard. But each time he thought he had it, it .scampered away and hid again.

The 707 climbed speedily and effortlessly, its great jet engines pouring out their long, thin vapor trails as they soared up through the cloud layer to where the sun was bright and the sky blue.

There were only fourteen passengers altogether and they were scattered through the huge aircraft, most of them lying stretched out across three seats at a time, sleeping.

But not N3. And not Dr. Sun.

He had taken the seat next to her before she'd had a chance to object. Tiny pinpricks of anxiety had flickered in her eyes and then had just as swiftly been masked.

Nick gazed past her now, out the window at the white wool clouds billowing along below the jet. They had been airborne half an hour. "How about a cup of coffee and a chat?" he suggested amiably.

"Stop playing games," she snapped. "I know perfectly well you're not Colonel Eglund."

Nick pressed the buzzer. The Air Force sergeant who doubled as a steward approached along the aisle. "Two cups of coffee," said Nick. "One black and one..." He turned toward her.

"Also black." When the sergeant had gone, she said, "Who are you? A government agent?"

"What makes you think I'm not Eglund?"

She turned away from him. "Your body," she said, and to his surprise he saw that she was blushing. "It's... well, it's different."

Suddenly, without warning, he said, "Who did you send to kill me in the Lunar Vehicle?"

Her head snapped around. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't try to kid me," rasped N3. He pulled the snapshot out of his pocket and handed it to her. "I see you're doing your hair differently now."

She sat rigidly composed. Her eyes were very wide, very dark. Without moving a muscle, except for her mouth, she said, "Where did you get this?"

He turned, watching the sergeant approach with the coffee. "They're selling them on Forty-second Street," he said harshly.

The blast wave slammed against him. The floor of the aircraft tilted sharply. Nick saw the sergeant grabbing at a seat, trying to regain his balance. The coffee cups went flying.

As his eardrums were relieved from the sonic pressure of the explosion Nick heard a fantastic howl, almost a scream. He was sucked violently against the back of the seat in front of him. He heard the girl scream, saw her flung against it, too.

The sergeant lost his grip. His body seemed to elongate toward a howling white aperture. There was a crash as his head went through it and his shoulders hit the frame, then his whole body was gone — sucked with a terrible whistling noise through the aperture. The girl was still screaming, her fist pressed against her teeth, her eyes starting from her head at what she had just witnessed.

The aircraft tilted violently. Seats were being sucked through the opening now. From the corner of his eye, Nick saw cushions, luggage and pieces of equipment sailing out into the sky. The unoccupied seats in front of them folded in half and their stuffings exploded. Wires came down from the ceiling. The floor buckled up. The lights went out.

Then suddenly he was in the air, floating toward the ceiling. The girl shot past him. As her head hit the ceiling, he grabbed her foot and pulled her toward him, tugging her down by her dress, inch by inch, until her face was level with his. They were upside down now, lying on the ceiling. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pale, and blood made a dark wriggling line down the side of it.

The screaming sound tore at his eardrums. Something crashed into him. It was Gordon Nash. Something else bumped his foot. He looked down. It was a member of the medical team, his neck hanging at an odd angle. Nick looked past them. The bodies of the other passengers came floating through the fuselage from the front of the aircraft, bobbing against the ceiling like corks.

N3 knew what was happening. The jet was out of control, plunging through space at fantastic speed, creating a condition of weightlessness.

To his astonishment, he felt someone tug at his sleeve. He forced his head around. Gordon Nash's mouth was moving. It formed the words,
Follow me.
The astronaut pulled himself forward, moving hand over hand along the luggage rack. Nick followed. Nash, he remembered suddenly, had walked in space on two Gemini missions. Weightlessness was nothing new to him.

He saw what Nash was trying to reach and understood. The inflatable life raft. There was a problem, though. The hydraulic component of the access door had been sheared off. The heavy metal section, which was actually part of the fuselage skin, wouldn't budge. Nick signaled Nash to move aside and "swam" over to the mechanism. From his pocket he took the tiny two-pronged wire he sometimes used to start the motors of locked cars. With it he managed to fire the battery-powered emergency explosive cap. The access door swung open.

Nick seized an edge of the life raft before it was sucked out the gaping aperture. He found the inflating mechanism and triggered it. It expanded with a fierce
swoosh
to twice the size of the aperture. He and Nash worked it into position. It wouldn't last long, but while it did, it would allow someone to reach the cockpit.

A giant fist seemed to slam into his ribs. He found himself lying face down on the floor. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. An object hit him in the back. Gordon Nash's foot. Nick craned his head around, saw the rest of him wedged between two seats. The other passengers came peeling off the ceiling behind him. The high scream of the engines deepened. Gravity was reasserting itself. The crew must have succeeded in lifting the jet's nose above the horizon line.

He crawled toward the cockpit, pulling himself along from seat to seat, struggling against the terrific slipstream. He knew that if the life raft went, so would he. But he had to reach the crew, had to file a last report over their radio if it turned out they were doomed.

Five faces turned toward him as he swung the cockpit door open. "What happened?" the pilot shouted. "What's the situation back there?"

"Bomb," Nick shot back. "Looks bad. Hole ripped in the fuselage. We've got it plugged — but only temporarily."

Four red alarm lights started to flash on the flight engineer's console. "Pressure and quantity!" the F.E. barked at the pilot. "Pressure and quantity!"

There was a smell of fright-sweat and cigarette smoke in the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot began to push and pull at switches as the navigator's monotonous drawl continued: "AFB Bobbie. This is Speedbird 410. C-ALGY calling B for Bobbie..."

There was a crunch of tearing metal and all eyes shifted to the right. "There goes No. 3," rasped the co-pilot as the inboard pod on the right wing tore away from the plane.

"What are our chances of making it down in one piece?" demanded Nick.

"At this point, Colonel, your guess is as good as mine. I'd say..."

The pilot was interrupted by a sharp voice on the overhead amplifier. "C-ALGY give your position. C-ALGY..."

The navigator gave their position and reported on the situation. "We've got a go-ahead," he said a moment later.

"We're going to try for Barksdale AFB at Shreveport, Louisiana," said the pilot. "They've got the longest runways around. But first we've got to use up our fuel. So we're going to be in the air for at least another two hours. I suggest you get everybody belted in back there, then just sit tight — and pray!"

Gouts of black smoke and orange flame poured from the three remaining jet nacelles. The huge aircraft shook violently as they banked their way through a tight turn over Barksdale Air Force Base.

The wind roared through the jet's interior, sucking violently at them. The safety straps cut into their midsections. There was a metallic, ripping sound, and more of the fuselage split open. Air rushed through the growing aperture with a shrill scream — like a can of hair spray with a hole punched in it.