The Tranquillity Alternative (19 page)

Libya, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel … and so on down the line, until the night sky was filled with real or bogus weather and communications satellites.

And meanwhile the United States—one-time world leader now suffering from premature senescence, mumbling to itself as it played one endless Sega game after another while pretending that its undisputed position as the
numero uno
global exporter of exercise videos actually meant something—fell headlong toward the inevitable rude awakening.

Whether or not this was the future Laughlin had intended to show him, the glimpse Parnell had caught was enough to chill him to the bone.

He picked up his glass and turned to Old Joe. “I think I need that drink now,” he said.

Uwe Aachener and Markus Talsbach sat next to each other on the bunk in Aachener’s cabin, assembling the tools of their trade.

When they returned to the VIP section after dinner, Talsbach had gone straight to his cabin and retrieved his equipment from its hiding place inside his duffel bag. Tucking it inside a folded towel, he had undressed, pulled on a robe from the locker, gathered his toiletry kit and waited exactly five minutes by the door, carefully listening for sounds from the corridor. When he was certain the corridor was empty, he switched off the light, slipped out the door, and quickly walked the seven paces it took to reach Aachener’s cabin. If anyone had seen him, he would have once again pretended not to understand English quite as well as he actually did, and claimed that he was taking a late-night bath.

No one had observed him, though, and Aachener was waiting for him. Once Markus was safely inside the cabin, Uwe had thrust a pillow against the bottom of the door to block the light; then, without saying more than was absolutely necessary, the two men went to work.

The guns they had smuggled aboard the
Dornberger
were both lightweight Glock 17s, all-plastic automatics which had been purchased on the European black market and shipped to French Guiana through a series of cutouts supplied by one of the South American drug cartels. The guns had been taken into space disassembled, the parts hidden within various articles of clothing in the astronauts’ duffel bags so that they were not likely to be discovered in a casual search; even so, they had not been required to pass through either a metal detector or fluoroscope at the Kourou spaceport. After all, the Sanger spaceplanes weren’t airliners; no one had ever given much credence to the idea that someone might actually try to hijack a shuttle. Still, the organization for which the two men were working didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.

Now they sat, side by side, methodically cleaning, assembling, and inspecting the two Glocks. Between them lay two cans of shaving cream from their kit bags; their false bottoms had been unscrewed, revealing the 9mm Teflon-nosed rounds stored within. The bullets were perfectly suited for their assignment; although they could stop a man cold, they would fragment if they hit something less yielding than flesh and bone.

As they carefully fitted the bullets into their clips, neither man said anything. They listened intently to every sound in the corridor outside, pausing whenever someone passed by. Yet they were both professional soldiers, albeit in a war of a more covert sort than that which was now being waged by their comrades a thousand miles away; although they were in enemy territory, they knew that the odds of their mission being detected at this last stage of the game were quite slender.

For a time, they had worried about the man who’d assumed the role of Paul Dooley. It wasn’t just that he didn’t belong in their class; the organization had recruited him for talents which they simply didn’t possess, and they accepted that as a matter of course. Yet the fact that he had undergone facial surgery to change his appearance, however necessary that might have been, was the potentially weak link in their plan. He had also been ill-trained for this mission, and although he had been able to disguise this as general incompetence so far, Talsbach and Aachener had barely been able to keep from looking at each other every time Dooley stumbled against a bulkhead or was unable to climb through a hatch without assistance.

Fortunately, Dooley wasn’t their leader. That was someone else entirely. Talsbach took some comfort in that fact as he glanced at his watch. It was almost 2300 hours, and the person they awaited was scheduled to arrive at any minute….

Footsteps approached from down the corridor. Markus and Uwe glanced at one another, then laid their guns on the bed, dropping towels and pillows over them.

The footsteps stopped outside their door. There was a double-rap on the door, a short pause, then a single knock. Markus looked at Uwe and nodded his head; Aachener stood up, unlocked the door, and opened it.

Without saying a word, their contact stepped inside.

The Late Show, with Roy Boone;
ATS broadcast June 16, 1977

(Music fades; studio applause)

Boone:
Thank you, thank you … double rations of cheese dip for the audience, Moose! They deserve it!

Moose:
Hah hah hah hah … yes!

Boone:
Fresh cheese dip, an American favorite … that’s right. Can’t get enough of our official dairy product…. Anyway, later in the show we’ll have on that lovely and talented actress, Miss Pia Zadora …

(Wild studio applause)

Moose:
Hah hah hah hah … they love her! Yes!

Boone:
Right … but first, please give a warm welcome to our next guest, all the way from West Germany, astronaut Karl Schiller!

(Polite applause as Schiller enters and shakes hands with Boone and Moose. Studio band plays an off-key Bavarian drinking song.)

Boone:
Thanks for being on the show, Karl …

Schiller:
Yes, yes … thank you. Good to be here today.

Boone:
So, Karl … or maybe we should call you Colonel Schiller … ?

Schiller:
No, no … it is okay to call me Karl, thank you …

Boone:
How about Colonel Karl?

(Laughter)

Schiller:
Karl is okay, thank you …

Boone:
Anyway, Karl, I understand you’re soon going to be flying West Germany’s first privately developed spaceship into orbit, the … uh …

Schiller:
The Sanger XS-1, yes, Roy. It’s an experimental …

Boone:
The XS-1? Does that mean it’s going to be excessive in one way?

Moose:
Yo! Everything in excess! Hunga-hunga!

(Laughter)

Schiller:
No, no, it’s really … it’s a prototype of a new spaceplane my country is developing to … uh, how should I say it? … explore outer space.

Boone:
But it’s not excessive?

(Laughter)

Schiller:
Ummm … I don’t know. How do you mean, excessive … ?

Boone:
Well, here’s a picture of it … show the folks back home that picture, Mike … yeah, there it is … and, gee, it looks kind of puny to me, Karl. Not much compared to an Atlas. Kind of a shrimp-ship, if you ask me.

(Laughter)

Moose:
A shrimp-ship! Yes!

Schiller:
Yes, it is rather small, if you should compare it to an Atlas-C, but that is the point, correct? A smaller spacecraft, we believe, can achieve much the same goals as an Atlas-C, but with less time to prepare on the ground …

Boone:
Uh-huh, right. But it can only take one person.

Schiller:
This is correct, yes. But it is only the experimental prototype for a much larger—

Boone:
And you’re going to fly this thing?

Schiller:
That is correct, yes … I will be the test pilot.

Boone:
There’s just one seat aboard, right?

Schiller:
No, no … there are three seats, but I’ll be …

Boone:
Three seats? Maybe you could take Pia Zadora and Moose along with you, then?

Moose:
Yo! I’d do that for a dollar!

(Laughter)

Schiller:
I don’t think so, no. It will be very dangerous, this mission, and this is why I will be the sole occupant.

Boone:
I see. Taking any cheese dip?

(Laughter)

Schiller:
No. I will not be taking any cheese dip. We will be conducting experiments in … ah, how do you say? … new theories of aerobraking maneuvers, so …

Boone:
How about beer? Maybe some schnitzel?

(Laughter)

Schiller:
No, I think not. The XS-1 is configured to take advantage of newly developed …

Boone:
Yeah, I see. Very interesting. So what does your country intend to do with this schnitzel-ship … excuse me, spaceship?

Schiller:
Ah! I’m pleased you asked! The European Space Agency believes we can open new commercial opportunities in space … umm, building solar power satellites, perhaps, or mining the Moon for valuable substances … if we can lower the costs of launching spacecraft into orbit. The XS-1, therefore, is a way of proving that we can …

Boone:
Such as going to the Moon? Or building space stations?

Schiller:
Yes, to begin with, but—

Boone:
We’ve done that already. Read the papers sometime.

(Laughter)

Moose:
Yes! We’ve done that already!

Boone:
Ten seconds left, Karl. So tell us … are you going to put any German babes on your space station?

Moose:
Yo! The man has a point! Hunga-hunga!

Audience
(in unison)
:
Hunga-hunga!

Schiller:
I cannot … I don’t see what is the point in discussing European space objectives if you will not seriously consider …

Boone:
Well, time’s up. Thanks for coming by, Karl. Hang around, folks, Pia Zadora’s up next …

(Applause as the studio band strikes up the
Star Wars
theme; screen fades to a still-shot of Moose wearing a space helmet painted with the
Late Show
logo.)

2/16/95 • 2245 GMT

J
OE LAUGHLIN HAD TOLD
her to follow the noise to the rec room; it turned out he wasn’t joking. As she climbed down a ladder to the second deck of Section 14, Berkley Rhodes heard music reverberating through the narrow corridors: “Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra,” by Jimi Hendrix, as performed by the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. Just under it was the unmistakable porcelain clack of billiard balls striking one another, and voices:

“Oh, f’r chrissakes!”

“I told you I could make that shot.”

“Coriolis effect …”

“I’m telling you, spin doesn’t have anything to do with it. Rack ’em up again and I’ll prove it.”

“Okay, but put something else on the deck. This classical stuff’s distracting me.”

The concerto stopped in mid-movement as Rhodes walked down the narrow corridor toward a half-open hatch at the end; the opening bars of “Stairway to Heaven” were greeted by a disgusted howl until the music abruptly stopped in mid-chord.

“Goddamn, Billy! Anything but that!”

Someone else laughed. “Just kidding … okay, hold on.”

Rhodes hesitated, then gently pushed open the hatch and peered inside. Several crewmen were hanging out in a narrow compartment which looked as if someone had made a conscientious attempt to furnish it like a comfortable den, but were doomed to failure by the metal walls and the pipes that ran across its low ceiling: a TV showing a video of an old Bruce Willis movie; an unpainted Revell model of the Wheel, suspended by a string from the ceiling; a small refrigerator, above which was taped a poster of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love” World Tour.

One man sprawled across a sagging couch, drinking beer as he watched two other crewmen playing eight-ball on the battered pool table that dominated the center of the room. Another crewman was sorting through an enormous rack of CDs next to an old Sony stereo system; someone else had his legs propped up on a table next to a computer terminal, typing into the keyboard in his lap.

Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at her.

The white cue ball slowly rolled across the scratched felt to gently tap a striped ball out of place; the two men playing pool barely noticed. The uncomfortable silence was broken only by a static hum from the stereo speakers.

Rhodes swallowed. “Hi,” she said brightly. “I’m Berkley Rhodes.”

“So what?” said one of the men at the pool table.

“Berkley Rhodes,” she repeated. “ATS News.”

The other pool player sighed as he picked up the triangle and placed it on the table. “Great. It’s one of the TV reporters.”

His companion began digging balls out of the pockets. “You’re not going to find a story here, miss,” he said as he rolled the balls across the table. “Maybe you ought to hunt down one of the uniforms and interview them instead.”

It dawned on Rhodes that there were only a handful of women aboard the Wheel, and none of them were in the rec room. She tried to bring Alex with her, but he had wanted to get some sleep before the flight tomorrow, so she’d let him go. Now she wished she had insisted …

She was about to back out of the compartment when the crewman sitting at the computer spoke up. “Chill out, guys,” he said. “I picked her up from the ferry this afternoon.”

It was only then that she recognized him as Dr. Z, the pilot of
Harpers Ferry
. He didn’t seem much friendlier than the others, but neither was he openly hostile; at any rate, it was a small relief to spot a familiar face.

“Doesn’t mean shit, Doc.” The man racking the balls took a beer out of the fridge and opened it. “She’s press. She wants a story, she can go interview Old Joe. This is our place.”

“C’mon, Fred, you don’t have to be an asshole all the time. You don’t see her carrying a camera right now, do you?” Dr. Z waved her into the room. “Want a beer, Ms. Rhodes?”

Rhodes took a tentative step through the hatch. “Thanks. Yeah, I’d love a beer … but I was told that wasn’t allowed here.”

Quiet laughter from the group, except for the two men at the pool table. “Whoever told you that was a liar,” the man on the couch said. He was the oldest one in the room; with wire-rimmed glasses, a potbelly, iron-gray hair that nearly reached his shoulders, and a four-day beard, he looked like an aging hippie who had somehow panhandled his way into orbit. “You’re looking at the last of the great space drinkers.”