The Tranquillity Alternative (32 page)

Ryer finished lacing up her sneakers, then stood up, empty-handed but certainly not empty-pocketed, turned around, and fell in behind Parnell as he led the way down to the heart of the machine.

So far, so good …

From “The Lost Frontier” by Ellen Schaeffer;
The New Yorker,
April 30, 1992

The Dole Administration’s announced intention to sell Tranquillity Base to Koenig Selenen GmbH has been largely dismissed by the shrinking cadre of space supporters as a wholly political decision, a blatant attempt at populism made in an election year by a Presidency which was clearly losing ground to the opposition. To be sure, there’s some truth to this allegation: Dole was clearly embarrassed by the revelation that he had authorized the first-use of the Teal Falcon nuclear arsenal during Desert Storm. He attempted to soothe the public by shutting down Tranquillity Base, but by then the scandal was out of control; the only possible recourse was to sell the abandoned base to the Germans, in effect washing his hands of the entire matter.

But what space advocates neglect to mention, perhaps even purposefully, is that almost none of Dole’s election opponents have come to the defense of Tranquillity Base. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, the apparent Democratic front-runner after Super Tuesday, has actually gone on record to support the White House decision, albeit in terms of widespread military cutbacks. Senator Albert Gore, Senator Paul Simon, and Senator Tom Harkin have remained mute on the question.

Former California governor Jerry Brown alone has opposed selling Tranquillity Base. He proposes that the United States use the base for exactly the same purposes as Koenig Selenen intends: as a lunar mining colony and, in the long run, as a site for disposal of high-level radioactive wastes from the same nuclear power plants that Brown says should be shut down. The only difference between Dole’s stance and Brown’s is that Brown wants to keep business within the United States; however, no American corporation has any interest in pursuing high-risk space enterprise, while Koenig Selenen is clearly gearing up to accept Dole’s offer.

The majority of voters aren’t paying much attention to Governor Brown’s counterproposal, except perhaps as another indication of how radical his campaign has become. The pro-space constituency is small, and not a particularly vocal one at that; all it takes to overwhelm their plaintive cries for the renewal of the sixties-era “High Frontier” is the mention of a single word: deficit.

That word alone is a massive, towering obstacle which none of the other candidates are willing to assault. Myopic or not, both parties agree that selling Tranquillity Base is a certain way of reducing the deficit, even though the base absorbed less than three percent of the federal budget when it was operational. It’s a visible target, it’s politically incorrect, and it makes for a great sound-bite on the evening news. It takes at least sixty seconds to give good reasons for keeping Tranquillity Base in American hands; a candidate’s opposition to Tranquillity Base—“Let’s sell the moon base, and sell it now!”—takes only two seconds before the network affiliates cut to commercials.

And this is the way we’ve reached the end of America’s greatest dream, the conquest of space. Born out of World War II, nourished by the Cold War, matured by grand visions of permanently settling the Moon and Mars … now relegated to the retirement home like a doddering grandfather who thinks Eisenhower is still President and his grown-up children haven’t started dating yet. And the children, entranced with the instant gratification supplied by new toys like home-computer networks, virtual reality, and fifty cable channels of reruns, are only too willing to let Gramps die so they can inherit his money and fight over the silverware.

The dream will continue. Men and women will still explore space. The frontier has been broken; like any human frontier that has ever existed, it will never be abandoned. Mankind has never turned its back on any place it has visited at least once. We have an innate urge to explore new worlds, no matter how far away they may be, or how hostile the environment. Like it or not, it’s part of our genetic makeup.

However, if anyone in America still wishes to visit the Moon within the next decade, they are advised to learn another language, and get a passport.

2/19/95 • 1050 GMT

T
HE LAUNCH CENTER WAS
located on Level 3A, a bowl-shaped room at the bottom of Unit A with fluorescent lights suspended from a low ceiling and its ladder placed between a pair of auxiliary control panels. Like the airlock on Level 1A, it was not made to hold nine people at once; getting everyone in there was a tight squeeze, made even tighter once Bromleigh began to set up his camera tripod in the back of the room.

The firing room was dominated by two identical consoles positioned fifteen feet apart, their swivel-mounted armchairs at right angles to one another. The consoles were lined with buttons and toggle switches surrounding a pair of computer screens, with six TV monitors arrayed above the consoles. On the wall between the two consoles was a small steel cabinet, sealed with two locks.

Once Parnell found the main fuse box and powered up the room, the consoles glowed like Christmas trees and the screens lit up with images relayed from TV cameras positioned in and around the crater. Like an ICBM bunker in Missouri, the firing room could be sealed off during a red alert, its only remaining contact a scrambled radio channel with Earth.

Once he was seated at the right-hand console, Parnell opened the secure KU-band channel to the Wheel. Main-Ops in turn relayed the transmission to Houston, where a group of SAC officers and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were waiting at Mission Control. When he achieved contact with the Von Braun Space Center, Gene unsealed the manila envelope Ray Harvey had given him at the Cape and read the authentication password typed across the first sheet of paper.

We copy, Teal Falcon
, an anonymous voice replied from a quarter of a million miles away.
Foxtrot Nebraska Romeo, one-zero-niner, affirmative. Can you give us status of the birds, please?

“Roger that, Mission.” Parnell reached across the board and pressed a set of six buttons.

The TV monitors flickered and fuzzed, then settled into fish-eye views from within the silos on the other side of the crater. The blunt noses of six Minuteman missiles protruded from the deep mooncrete pits in which they were nestled, held in place by vertical rows of metal flanges. Electrical cables led from the silo walls to the rockets; since the silo covers had not yet been raised, the missiles were illuminated by red fluorescent lights that cast dark shadows across their sleek fuselages.

Parnell’s eyes swept across the screens, his board, and the CRTs. Nothing seemed amiss. The missiles appeared to be the way he had last seen them; nothing had degraded during their long slumber. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad news.

“All missiles are intact and ready for launch,” he said. “Awaiting authorization to proceed to standby.”

We copy, Teal Falcon
, the voice responded.
IAEA concurs with your findings. You have SAC authorization to proceed to standby status. T-minus one hour, five minutes and counting, over.

“Roger that, Mission,” Parnell said. “We’re commencing final power-up and activation of launch control systems. Over.”

He took off the headset and placed it on the desk in front of him, then got up from the chair. “Mr. Dooley?” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s your turn.”

“About time,” Dooley murmured as he traded places with Parnell. “I was beginning to feel like a tourist.”

Parnell said nothing. He leaned over the back of the chair, studying Dooley as he placed his laptop computer on the desk and unfolded its screen. While Dooley pried open the back of the CPU and pulled a rolled cable out of his equipment case, Parnell glanced around, surreptitiously noting everyone’s position in the firing room.

Jay Lewitt was seated at the left-hand console, watching Dooley as he interfaced his Tandy/IBM to the master fire-control system through the right console’s serial port. Cris Ryer stood directly behind Lewitt, observing everything that was going on. In the back of the room, Alex Bromleigh had set up his camera and was fiddling with the lens; Berkley Rhodes was helping out by running a coaxial cable to the main communications panel on Lewitt’s board. According to their agreement with NASA, the ATS news team would not transmit live pictures until after the missiles were fired; before then, they could only record the launch procedure.

Markus Talsbach lingered near the ladder, his arms folded across his chest. Curiously, there was no sign of either Uwe Aachener or James Leamore.

“Mr. Talsbach?” Parnell asked, and the German astronaut looked up. “Where are your friends?”

“Eh?” Talsbach raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “Ah! Oh, they have gone elsewhere, I think.”

“You think?” He was beginning to wonder if Talsbach was twice the idiot he seemed to be. “There’s not too many places they could have gone, Markus. Where did they go?”

“Oh! Ahh … James needed to find the …” He seemed to be searching for the correct word. “The levorotary, I believe. Uwe decided to go with him, in order to look at the rest of the base.” He frowned. “Is this wrong? Should I go in search of them?”

Parnell shook his head. “No … I just wish they had told me where they were headed, that’s all.”

In fact, he didn’t care to have anyone out of sight just now. The head was located in Unit B, on the other side of the bunker; that was a long way from the firing room. Parnell’s first impulse was to go looking for Leamore and Aachener, but when he glanced down at Dooley again, he saw that the hacker had already linked up with the main computer system.

“Okay, here we go.” Dooley rapidly typed a set of commands into his computer. As he did, the CRTs on his console and Lewitt’s simultaneously began to scroll long lists of program code. “Yeah, baby,” he whispered to himself as he eagerly watched the screen in front of him, his fingers periodically stabbing at the keys. “Go, mama, go …”

“What’s happening?” Parnell asked.

“I’m reintroducing my buddy to his long-lost brother.” Dooley blinked from behind his glasses as he looked up at Parnell. “I’m matching my half of the c-cube codes with the ones Teal Falcon has in memory. When they’ve finished shaking hands, we’ll be ready to go ahead with the rest of the sequence.”

“I see.” It was a simplistic explanation, but it matched what Parnell had been told during his briefings. Once the two sets of programs were matched and final authentication was received from Houston, he and Lewitt would be able to proceed with electrical check-out and the arming and targeting of the Minutemen.

So far, everything was going according to plan. In only an hour, the President would go on live network television, make his carefully scripted statement to the nation and the world, then push a button on the Oval Office desk. A few seconds later, Parnell and Lewitt would receive the green light from Houston. A final twist of a pair of keys, and the birds would leave their nests.

The only thing stopping him were a few suspicions cast by a couple of civilians, and who were they? A college kid on the Wheel and an ill woman somewhere in Arizona: All they had for proof were a couple of strange conversations on a private computer network and the coincidental murder of a pizza delivery boy.

Insane …

Sure, Joe Laughlin thought there was something amiss, but Joe could be wrong. Just as Parnell himself could be wrong by believing any one of them. Did he really want to end his career by screwing up to this magnitude?

“Okay!” Dooley’s shout interrupted his thoughts. “We’re in!” He looked up at Parnell. “All systems are nominal, Commander. It’s all yours.”

Parnell sucked in his breath as he stood erect. “Well done, Paul. My compliments.”

Lewitt dipped his head and pulled the key from around his neck. “Anytime you’re ready, Commander,” he said, jingling the key in his hand. “Let’s get it on the road.”

“Sure, Jay.” Parnell checked the digital chronometer between the two launch stations. The clock stood at 1110 Zulu.

Just enough time for him to take a reality check …

“I’m going topside for a sec,” he said to no one in particular as he stepped away from the chair. “Nature’s calling.”

Rhodes looked up from her work. “You’re going to worry about that now?”

“Jesus, I don’t believe it …” Dooley irritably rubbed his mouth. “You picked a fine time to take a whizz, man.”

Lewitt seemed equally baffled, but he gave his commander an amused grin. “Hell of a time for a pee-break.”

“We’re running ahead of schedule.” Parnell managed a sheepish shrug and grin as he headed for the hatch. Talsbach said nothing as he stepped aside. “Might as well take care of business. Excuse me …”

Then he began to climb up the ladder to Level 2A.

The logistics compartment was vacant. This shouldn’t have troubled Parnell, but it did.

He walked softly past the computers to the lateral hatch leading to Unit B. The hatch cover was still open; light glowed from the opposite end of the fifteen-foot connecting tunnel. When he bent over and listened carefully, though, he could hear no sound from the crew quarters on the other side of the bunker.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”

No one answered. Of course, that could mean nothing. The head was located on Level 1B, one deck up in the second sphere. They might not have heard him. For all he knew, Leamore and Aachener could be raiding the galley fridge.

His first impulse was to enter the tunnel and go investigate their prolonged absence. He bent low, raised his right foot and set it in the tunnel … then stopped himself. His first priority should be to return to the firing room, where he could keep a close eye on Dooley and Ryer.

He reminded himself that he had left the unsealed launch codes on the desk in front of the right-hand firing console. That was stupid; although the missiles couldn’t be armed or launched without the key which still hung around his neck, someone could nevertheless make use of the authenticators.