The Tranquillity Alternative (28 page)

Then Parnell was left with nothing but white noise. He switched off the radio, lay back in the couch, and reflected upon everything he had just been told.

He was still thinking some two hours later when he heard someone coming up the ladder from belowdecks. Looking around, he saw Jay Lewitt float up the gangway shaft, bleary-eyed and clutching a squeeze bulb in his free hand.

“Morning, skipper. Why’s it so dark in here?” Lewitt found the dimmer switch next to the ladder and turned up the ceiling lights a few degrees. Parnell blinked in the sudden glare, and the flight engineer grinned at him. “You haven’t been sleeping on watch, have you?”

“Naw. Uh-uh.” Parnell shook his head. “I was on the telescope for a while; then I got off and came over here.” He didn’t want to mention the conversation he’d just had with the Wheel. Not yet, at least. “How’s everything below? Everyone still asleep?”

“Like babies.” Lewitt signed himself into the logbook next to the command couch, then glided over to the engineering station. “’Cept for the Germans, of course … man, Hans and Franz sure snore loud.”

Parnell smiled despite his worries. The nicknames Ryer had given Aachener and Talsbach had stuck but good, even if they were known only among the command crew. And the Germans
were
loud; Parnell’s bunk was below Aachener’s, and last night he had to shake him several times before the astronaut-trainee finally shut up. “I hope the jazz I put on didn’t keep you up,” he said.

“Hmm?” Lewitt glanced away from his console for a moment. “Naw, it didn’t keep me awake. Didn’t even hear it.” He swore under his breath as he studied one of the meters. “Hey, you bastard! You forgot to realign the solar array. Battery’s down three percent.”

“I did? Sorry about that.” He watched as Lewitt carefully adjusted a knob which turned the outrigger mercury-solar mirror toward the Sun. Still, he was relieved to find that Lewitt hadn’t overheard his end of the conversation with the Wheel; if Jay hadn’t heard it, then the chances were good that no one else had either.

Nonetheless, Parnell knew that he couldn’t handle this by himself. He had to confide in someone he could trust, and Lewitt was the best prospect. As the flight engineer settled into his couch, Parnell unbuckled himself from the pilot’s seat and pushed over to his friend.

“Hey, Jay,” he said softly, grabbing hold of a ceiling rail and looking down at the engineer, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you. While you were asleep, I received a call from the station …”

It took just a few minutes for Parnell to relate the gist of the emergency transmission from Laughlin and Zimm. He left out many of the details, if only because it would have taken too long to explain the exact nature of the relationship between Thor200 and Mr. Grid. He was surprised to see that Lewitt took it so calmly; his only outward display of emotion was a raised eyebrow and a slight pursing of his lips as he listened to his commander’s suspicions.

“And you believe this?” Jay asked when Parnell was finished.

Parnell shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounds kind of farfetched, but …”

“But it came from Old Joe, and Hal Robinson doesn’t write science fiction anymore.” Jay took a sip from his lukewarm coffee, grimaced, and tucked the squeeze bulb between his knees so it wouldn’t drift away. “I dunno. I gotta admit, Dooley’s been acting sort of flaky ever since we got started. But that’s no real reason to start thinking he’s …”

“An imposter?”

“An imposter, whatever you want to call him.” Lewitt grinned. “Did you ever see that movie … what was it,
The Manchurian Candidate
? The one where John Lennon is supposed to be brainwashed into killing a presidential candidate?” He shrugged. “Good movie, but I thought it was kind of a crock.”

“Maybe so.” Gene had been pursuing the same line of thought for the last two hours. “This isn’t a movie, though … and Dooley’s the guy who’s supposed to reactivate the bunker computers at Teal Falcon.”

“We’ve got the keys …”

“We’ve got the keys, sure, but he’s the man carrying the football.”

“The computer codes?” Jay’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at?”

“Think about it.” Parnell gripped the bar above his head and performed a clumsy chin-up. “He’s carrying half of the program that activates the bunker’s c-cube system. Once he plugs it in, he’s got complete control of the Minutemen. That means he doesn’t have to fire them toward the Sun. If he wants, he can aim them at any point on Earth …”

“Yeah, but what does that do?” Lewitt looked at him askance. “C’mon. So he decides to fire them at … I dunno, Washington, D.C., or New York, whatever. It would still take two days for the rockets to reach ground zero. NORAD would see them coming long before then and do something about it.”

“Like what? Evacuate Washington or New York? You have any idea what that would take?”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be a city. It could be Crystal Palace itself.” Crystal Palace was the code name for NORAD’s strategic defense complex beneath Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. “Maybe it would be Owl Hoot, Minnesota. Point is, they’d have two days to scramble an a-sat system and blow ’em out of space.”

Parnell had to admit that Lewitt had a point. If nuclear terrorism was the objective, then taking over Teal Falcon was a poor way of going about it. The six Minutemen at Sabine Crater were intended to be second-strike weapons; they were useless when it came to launching a sneak attack against anyone but the lowliest third-world nation, and even Somalia or Bangladesh would be able to find some patron superpower with the technological capability to protect them within two days. International ABM treaties notwithstanding, it wasn’t impossible to intercept an incoming nuke from the Moon; everyone knew that antisatellite systems had been devised in the eighties which could knock down a low-orbit target.

Gene absently rubbed his beard. “I don’t know how it would work, either … but that doesn’t mean we can ignore this.” He stifled a yawn as he checked his watch. It was almost 0230 Zulu. With luck, he could manage a couple of hours of shut-eye before he had to get up again and prepare for the landing at Tranquillity Base. “I’m just saying we should keep a close eye on Dooley. Call it paranoid, but …”

“I hear you.” Lewitt nodded, although skepticism was written across his face. “Anything else?”

Parnell hesitated. “Yeah. One more thing … if this isn’t a snark hunt, then he may not be acting alone. If I was a terrorist group or whatever, I wouldn’t send Dooley out here without some sort of backup.”

“Ah, c’mon!” Jay’s credulity had clearly been stretched as far as it would go. “Who else do you think is involved? Leamore? Hans and Franz?”

For the first time since he had brought up the subject, Gene wondered if he wasn’t indeed jumping at shadows. He realized how all this must sound to Lewitt: an old Cold War astronaut, brought back into service for one last mission, still searching for commies beneath the bed. Now more than ever, he was feeling his age….

But he had gone this far already, so he might as well spell out everything that had crossed his mind.

“Keep a sharp watch on Ryer,” he said quietly. “Dooley’s not the only one who’s been acting a little weird lately. Know what I mean?”

Jay slowly nodded, his expression suddenly very somber. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I’ve noticed that.” He frowned. “But why would she … ?”

“She’s got a grudge. Let’s just put it that way.”

A corner of Lewitt’s mouth lifted. “So I’ve heard.” He shrugged. “Okay. Maybe you got a point, skipper. I’ll watch ’em both.”

“Do that.” Gene’s eyelids were beginning to feel heavy. The human body needs less rest in free-fall than it does on Earth; on the other hand, he had been on duty for the last sixteen hours. For some reason, though, he didn’t feel like going down to C-deck.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, pushing off from the bulkhead, “I’m just going to catch a few winks at my station. Mind if I turn down the lights a bit?”

Lewitt looked a little surprised. “What, too tired to go below?”

“Just don’t want to deal with the snoring, that’s all.” Parnell pulled himself along the handrails until he reached the command couch, pausing by the astrogator’s station to hit the switch that irised the ceiling dome shut. He didn’t want to admit it to Lewitt, but he was also reluctant to leave his post on A-deck just now.

Nor did he relish the idea of going to sleep in a dark room so close to Dooley.

From the transcript of a hearing before the Ways and Means Committee, United States Senate; March 14, 1988.

Sen. Warren P. Rudman (R., NH):
The chair recognizes Senator Hollings.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D., SC):
Thank you, Senator. First off, I wish to compliment Mr. Ballou and his staff for being so candid in their review of NASA’s current status. This committee hasn’t always received straight answers from the space agency, but I’m pleased to see that the current NASA administrator has broken from the past and supplied us with such a comprehensive report.

Hamilton Ballou, Chief Administrator, NASA:
You’re welcome, Senator. I don’t agree with your assessment of my agency’s honesty in dealing with Ways and Means before now, but I’ll accept even a left-handed compliment.

Hollings:
In an election year, Mr. Ballou, any compliment is a good one. I’m particularly impressed with the sheer size of the report NASA has prepared—1,125 pages in all, almost as long as Tom Clancy’s new novel—and the presentation you’ve just given us, but there are still quite a few questions I have about its summation.

If I may quote from … ah, page 12, paragraph 3—you say, “We strongly believe that unless the United States acts now to preserve the technological infrastructure of its civil space program, this country will continue to lose ground to competing foreign space programs, until NASA becomes an agency without any clear purpose or objective.” Can you clarify that statement for the committee, please?

Ballou:
Certainly, Senator. Last September, the European Space Agency successfully tested its new Sanger spaceplane. A private German aerospace corporation, GmbH Koenig, has already expressed interest in purchasing three Sangers for the purpose of commercial space activities. This follows the success of the French-German firm Arianespace in capturing over fifty percent of the global commercial satellite launch industry with its expendable Ariane boosters. Koenig has also declared its interest in constructing solar power satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit.

Once the Sanger becomes fully operational, Germany will have a reusable manned spacecraft which can outperform our Atlas-C ferries. After the President permanently grounded
Discovery
and Congress voted down NASA’s request to build either a replacement for
Challenger
or a new generation of single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, this country has been left with a fleet of spacecraft which is over twenty-five years old.

Not only that, but the last time Space Station One was retrofitted was three years ago. As grateful as NASA is for the appropriations which made this possible, the new computers are already a generation behind state-of-the-art cybernetic technology, and in five more years they will be hopelessly obsolete. Because the Reagan Administration also downscaled operations on the Wheel and at Tranquillity Base, we’re left with a space station and a moonbase which are critically undermanned as well as underfinanced. We believe …

Hollings:
Okay, hold it right there. You just hit the key word—“underfinanced.” Of course, it shouldn’t be seen as coincidental that your report comes at the same time as the NASA budget for the next fiscal year is being considered by both the House and Senate, but this report seems to state that unless this country continues to spend as much money as it already does on space, if not increase appropriations, then the space program will fall apart tomorrow.

Ballou:
Not tomorrow morning, Senator, or perhaps not even by next Tuesday … but it will continue to deteriorate over the coming decade until it becomes next to negligible. In the meantime, Europe will continue to develop its spacefaring capability. In all likelihood, so will Japan. When this occurs, the United States will be left with a space station and a lunar base that will be unable to compete in the global marketplace for space-based services.

Hollings:
Such as these … um, solar-powered satellites? Mr. Ballou, may I remind you that this country already has an energy surplus? Even without building new nuclear power plants, the U.S. is able to furnish ample electrical power to all its citizens.

Ballou:
Senator, may I remind the committee that our energy lifeline is largely dependent upon foreign oil? For now, yes, we enjoy the advantage of having the OPEC nations in disagreement over production and shipping, but we can’t depend on that forever. Europe and Japan have already learned that lesson, which is why they’re working on developing long-range forms of energy supply. If we …

Hollings:
And I should remind the chief administrator that we are facing a budget deficit which requires all sectors of the government to make cutbacks in spending …

Ballou:
Yes, sir. I’ve noted the salary increase the Senate just voted itself …

Rudman:
Mr. Ballou, please keep to the matter at hand.

Ballou:
I apologize, Mr. Chairman. Please ignore that outburst. It was uncalled-for.

Rudman:
I quite agree. Senator Hollings?

Hollings:
As I was saying, under the Deficit Reduction Act we’ve required all federal agencies to trim their fiscal outlays to reduce the national deficit by half over the next five years. NASA is no exception to the rule, Mr. Ballou, and I don’t see any reason why we should make an exception. NASA may want to explore the stars and galaxies, but we’ve got many pressing matters on Earth which need to be taken care of first. If our European allies and Japan want to squander their money on sky-high projects, they can do so.

But down at the Air and Space Museum there’s a rock in a display case that looks no different than a rock from South Carolina, and it took almost three hundred billion dollars to get it here from Mars. Your study says we should spend more tax money to go back and get another rock to keep it company. Now, how do you justify that sort of expenditure, Mr. Ballou?