The Tranquillity Alternative (21 page)

All in all, it was safe sex, albeit taken to a cybernetic extreme. Neither Mr. Grid/LadyG nor Thor200/DukePaul had ever met face to face, which was probably just as well. If Paul Dooley was nobody’s dashing duke by real-world standards, it was only because Curtis had recently laid eyes upon him. Dooley likewise was innocent of the fact that his secret lover of the net was one Gabrielle Blumfield, a former computer engineer in Phoenix, Arizona, whose multiple sclerosis had confined her to a wheelchair. She used the Mr. Grid pseudonym as a way of hiding the fact that she was female; only Curtis was aware that she was sick … and neither Thor200 nor Dr. Z had the slightest idea what she looked like in real life.

So what are you getting at?
he asked.
Are you trying to say that someone else was posing as the Duke tonight?

The reply came as quickly as cyberspace would permit.
No. I think someone on the Wheel is posing as Paul Dooley.

He frowned as he read that. True, she knew who Thor200/DukePaul really was, even if Dooley didn’t know her true identity; Dooley had let her know about himself a few months ago, including many of the details of his upcoming mission to Tranquillity Base. However, Zimm had no idea what sort of side-effects her medication might give her; he couldn’t discount drug-induced paranoia.

Do you realize how hard it would be for someone to pretend to be Paul Dooley?
he typed.
You can’t just waltz into KSC, claim to be someone else, and climb aboard the next rocket. Maybe someone managed to hack into Le Matrix and get DukePaul’s password.

Billy switched CDs, changing the music from the Cowboy Junkies to Midnight Oil, while Poppa Dog continued to tell tall tales about the old days aboard the Wheel.

I thought of that,
Mr. Grid replied.
I asked him if he was aboard the Wheel, and he said yes. Also, there was a LONG pause last night while we were talking, when he was still in Florida … and he was really short with me when he came back. ;/

That doesn’t mean anything,
Zimm typed, although he was beginning to have his doubts.

Le Matrix’s double-key encryption system was virtually foolproof when it came to foiling the so-called cypherpunks who specialized in such activity, to the point that it was nearly impossible to gain access to another user’s password. Unless Dooley had unwisely blabbed his Le Matrix password to someone—which was unlikely, considering his own reputation among hackers—then the only way someone could have signed on as either Thor200 or DukePaul was for someone to …

No. That was too weird.

But was it? He recalled introducing himself to Dooley, when
Constellation
’s passengers had climbed aboard
Harpers Ferry
. Dooley had seemed confused, almost evasive, when he had mentioned Mr. Grid. And ever since his arrival aboard the Wheel, Dooley had holed up in his cabin in the VIP section.

There’s something fishy going on,
Mr. Grid said.
I don’t know how … but that’s NOT Paul Dooley.

Prove it,
he typed.

A short pause, then:
I’ll get back to you. Until then, KEEP AN EYE ON HIM!!

OK
,
OK
, I will.
Zimm grinned, then added,
If you’re wrong, then you pay my bill next month!

Deal!
BRB
! Nite!!

A moment later, her logon disappeared from the top of the screen, leaving him alone in the private room where they had held their conversation.

Dr. Z signed off Le Matrix, then stood up and stretched his aching back. Turning around, he noticed for the first time that Berkley Rhodes had left the rec room. Apparently she had decided to call it a night. No wonder; tomorrow morning, she would be heading for the Moon.

“Have fun with your friends?” Poppa asked. He was cracking open another beer and settling into a frayed armchair next to Billy.
Die Hard
had ended, and they were watching the opening credits of some Claude von Damme kickboxer flick.

Zimm picked up the pool cue that lay on the table and slid the white ball into position. “Same as usual.”

From
The Washington Post;
January 12, 1981

Reagan Set to Launch New

Military Space Program

News Analysis

by Maureen McCoy

WASHINGTON—Only a week before his inauguration, part of President-elect Ronald Reagan’s transition team is already planning a new American space initiative. Although members of the group refuse to disclose its details at this time, insiders among Reagan’s so-called California kitchen cabinet say that the plans call for a revival of the long-dormant military space program.

Formally known as the Strategic Defense Working Group, its members include former NASA administrator James Fletcher, physicist Edward R. Teller, and former Air Force General Omar Bliss, who led the Blue Horizon project during World War II. The group is headed by William J. Casey, widely considered to be Reagan’s choice for Director of Central Intelligence.

Although the group will not propose reinstatement of the U.S. Space Force, which was phased out in the early 1970s during the Kennedy Administration, they will recommend that the White House pursue defense-related objectives as the nation’s first priority in space, with the U.S. Air Force being the lead agency instead of NASA. Possible suggestions include:

De-emphasis of basic scientific research, and shifting technological resources to space-based national defense, including development of a new generation of surveillance satellites;

Final authorization of a new “space shuttle” which will eventually replace NASA’s aging fleet of Atlas-C space ferries;

Downscaling operations at Tranquillity Base, and eventual curtailment of NASA lunar operations;

Opening the civilian space program to participation by American business, allowing U.S. private enterprise to compete on a “free market” basis with the burgeoning European space industry.

It is also possible that the Strategic Defense Working Group will recommend to the President-elect that the Air Force develop an orbital “space shield” of laser satellites, which would protect the United States against nuclear attack. Dr. Teller is known to be a leading advocate of this plan, and General Bliss made several public speeches urging the outgoing McGovern Administration to fund research in this area. Fletcher is regarded as an advocate of the space shuttle, an advanced spaceplane which was shelved during the McGovern Administration.

Teller and Bliss apparently have Governor Reagan’s ear. During the presidential campaign, Reagan made several references to the declining state of the American space program, which hinted at his interest in renewed military involvement. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last July, he spoke of NASA’s “liberal agenda” which placed “higher priority on studying moon rocks than on looking for ways to protect Americans.” Reagan also cited the $52 billion spent in the last decade on Project Ares, claiming that it was “money the Democrats invested in the Russian propaganda machine” which could have been better used for military space objectives.

Space was not a major topic in the 1980 campaign, compared to the economy and the Iran hostage crisis, yet it seems as if Reagan was able to play upon widespread disenchantment with NASA as a minor theme. President McGovern was never able to successfully answer Republican charges that the past three Democratic administrations turned NASA into a cash cow for special interests, although McGovern trimmed NASA’s budget by 15 percent during the past eight years.

The prospect of Reagan’s turning the ailing American space program into a defense program hasn’t been embraced by many people within NASA.

“This ‘space-shield’ business is pure sky-blue malarkey on Teller’s part,” says an unnamed senior NASA official. “Livermore labs has conducted some promising experiments in that area, but nothing that could result in a reliable strategic defense system within the next twenty years. Teller is selling Reagan a bill of goods his people can’t deliver.”

As for the space shuttle, the same source is dubious about the idea of using throwaway solid-rocket boosters. “We need a new generation of ferries, yes,” he says, “but using SRB’s for a manned spacecraft is a risky business. If we dive headlong into something like that, especially as a crash program, then we may pay for it down the road.”

Wendell Haynes, president of the American Institute of Astronautics, is also skeptical of a renewed military space program. “Under the current budget environment, the only way Reagan is going to be able to fund this effort is by cutting civilian space efforts to the bone,” he says. “If he does that, there goes interplanetary science, research into solar power satellites, lunar operations … the whole works. NASA will be emasculated, and Europe will continue to take the lead.”

Will American industry be able to take up the slack, as the working group believes it will? “I rather doubt it,” Haynes says. “More than likely, commercial users will just hitch a ride aboard German rockets rather than developing new domestic launch systems. In the long run, we’ll be handing the space industry to the Europeans.”

Transition press secretary Larry Speakes refused to comment on this issue….

2/17/95 • 0716 GMT

O
KAY, KIDS,
DR. Z
said,
hang on back there. I’m opening the hatch now.

Darkness clutched
Harpers Ferry
’s cargo bay for a few more seconds, then pure white light sliced across one bulkhead, gradually widening into a chasm as the hatch silently cranked open. The raw glare of the naked sun caused everyone to wince and hastily reach for the reflective gold visors on their helmets.

And there it was: the U.S.S.
Conestoga
, berthed inside its enormous orbital hangar. Spotlights along the hangar walls cast complex shadows from the skeletal framework across the dull-gray globes and cylinders of its fuel tanks, which separated the massive array of engines at the stern from the giant personnel sphere at the bow. Its landing gear and the outrigger antennas were still folded up against the tanks, lending the moonship the vague appearance of a humongous insect slumbering within a cocoon.

Whatever sleep this bug had enjoyed for the last three years, though, was now at an end. As
Harpers Ferry
glided into a parking orbit several hundred feet from the hangar, another taxi began to haul
Conestoga
out of the hangar at the end of a short, thick cable. The taxi was assisted by two astronauts in EVA bottlesuits which functioned as miniature one-man tugboats, their operators holding onto the moonship’s slender girders. A fuel tender, itself a modified taxi outfitted with rows of propellant cylinders, approached the large craft as it prepared to pump lox and hydrazine into the fuel tanks. Working together, the taxi and the bottlesuits gently coaxed the moonship from the hangar which had protected it against micrometeorites during its long dormancy, the pilots making sure that no part of its superstructure banged against the hangar walls.

It was the first time Parnell had laid eyes on
Conestoga
in two decades; despite the humid warmth of his hardsuit, he felt a chill run down his back. He had forgotten how bloody huge this machine really was. Simply saying that it was 160 feet long—taller than the Statue of Liberty, as the old USSF fact-sheets once proudly proclaimed—wasn’t sufficient, nor was the fact that it had taken almost two dozen flights of Atlas-C cargo ferries to loft its unassembled parts into space.

The
Conestoga
was, succinctly put, a monster.

That’s a big ship
, Dooley said.

Parnell glanced across the narrow compartment at the programmer. “If I didn’t know better, Mr. Dooley,” he said, “I’d swear you were impressed.”

He heard the others laugh through the comlink.
Conestoga
’s flight team and passengers were huddled together in the taxi’s unpressurized bay, hanging onto the cargo net with their gauntleted hands. Because the taxi couldn’t directly dock with the moonship’s main airlock, they had all donned their lunar hardsuits before they left the Wheel; having done so, however, it was impossible for them to ride in the taxi’s forward passenger compartment.

Is that the retriever ship?
Berkley Rhodes asked, pointing through the hatch.

Parnell turned to look. Tethered to the side of the hangar was a much smaller, yet no less ungainly spacecraft. The MR-13 was a mutt of a ship; a third-stage
Atlas
-class orbiter, its wings and vertical stabilizer cut off and replaced by a ring of seven barrel-like fuel tanks. A saucer-shaped docking probe protruded from a long boom at its bow; a high-gain dish antenna rose from behind the pilot canopy, while the stem of a bottlesuit stuck out from beneath the hull. Someone had painted a picture of a golden retriever on the fuselage; the dog held a rocket in its smiling mouth, and below it were inscribed the words
Fido’s Pride
.

“That it is,” Parnell said. “How did you recognize it?”

I talked to the pilot last night in the rec room.
Rhodes paused, then added somewhat reproachfully,
You should have come down, Commander. We had a good time.

“You met Poppa McGraw?” Parnell chuckled and shook his head. “Ma’am, I hope you didn’t do an interview with him. Half of what he says is—”

Total bullshit, according to Dr. Z.

Parnell smiled. “I’m not going to call him a liar, but he does tend to embellish the truth.”

Did he tell you about the time he saved Neil Armstrong’s life?
Lewitt asked Rhodes.
No offense, but I’d get Neil’s side of the story first before you run with it.

I didn’t say I believed it!
she retorted.
I just said I
…

Parnell ignored the rest of the conversation. Now that
Conestoga
was free of the hangar, Dr. Z gently maneuvered
Harpers Ferry
as close as possible to the moonship. One of his crewmates had already crawled out of the forward cage and was using his MRU pack to jet over to
Conestoga
, dragging one end of a long tether cable behind him. In a few minutes he would attach the cable to a circular catwalk surrounding the main airlock, which was beneath the personnel sphere. Once this job was completed, the crew would be able to traverse the cable, hand over hand, from the taxi to the moonship.