"Allen Steele is the best hard SF writer to come along in tl~-Ile last decade," -JOHN VARLEY L, L I ITRAN ALLEN STEEL Bestselling Author of The Jericho fterartion I I'll.,11 'It 'It '1! 11 ISBN 0-441-00299- >*21-95 U.S (>*30-95 CAN 77iii"TEPNATIVE ALLEN STEELE Hailed as "a worthy successor to Robert Heinlein" (The Washington Post) bestselling author Allen Steele has captivated science fiction readers with his novels including The Jericho Iteration and Labyrinth of Night. Now, this gifted writer recasts a part of our history that is as American as apple pie-the space program-and gives this hallmark of technological wonder a double-edged vole, the powei loi both good and evil... Tranquillity Base is a permanent moon installation, civilian-manned and devoted to peaceful scientific research. Its dark side is Teal Falcon, a lunar nuclear base implemented during the Truman and Eisenhower years, six missile silos housing rockets poised to attack. Now the Cold War is over. The U.S. space program is a victim of politics, and Tranquillity Base, long deserted, is about to be sold to a foreign industrial conglomerate. Leading the symbolic mission to turn the base over to Its new owners-and to dismantle the missiles-is Commander Gene Parnell, a pioneering astronaut who installed Tranquillity thirty But the commander soon realizes that someone on the mission has other plans for Teal Falcon. Who is it? Who can Parnell trust*7 Who should he fear? The veteran astronaut is forced to play a deadly game with the unknown terrorist. The stakes: the future of Dianet Earth. I I v t T H E Ace Books by Allen Steele ORBITAL DECAY CLARKE COUNTY, SPACE LUNAR DESCENT LABYRINTH OF NIGHT THE JERICHO ITERATION RUDE ASTRONAUTS THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE T H E I 1 w I L L I I ~ I I v ALLEN STEELE A ACE BOOKS, NEWYORK This is a work of fiction. The events described are imaginary and the characters an fictitious and not intended to represent specific living persons. When persons or enti ties are referred to by their true names, they are portrayed in entirely fictitious cir curnstances; the reader should not infer that these events ever actually happened. Excerpt from Across the Space Frontier by Cornelius Ryan, copyright C 1952 b) Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, 1980 renewed by Viking Penguin Inc. Used b) permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Excerpt from You Will Go to the Moon by Mae and Ira Freeman, copyright 0 1959 by Mae Freeman and Ira Freeman. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE An Ace Book Published by The Berkley Publishing Group 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 100 16 The Putnam Berkley World Wide Web site address is http://wwwberkleycom Copyright (0 1996 by Allen M. Steele, Cover art by Bob Eggleton Book design by Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics Co., Inc. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission, First Edition: March 1996 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Steele, Allen M. The tranquillity alternative / Allen M. Steele. - Ist ed. p. cm. ISBN 0-441-00299-4 (hardcover) 1. Title. PS3569.T338425T73 1996 813'.54-dc2O Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 95-21056 CIP In memory of Dot Hill Icters are s or enti- tiou,, cir- iened. 052 by Used by 1959 by ric. F The space station, with all its potentialities for exploration of the universe, for all kinds of scientific progress, for the preservation of peace or for the destruction of civilization, can be built. When the decision has been reached and the funds have been appropriated, the rest is only a matter of time. Many factors make the station inevita- ble-not the least the insatiable curiosity that has sent man across the oceans and finally into the air. Perhaps the military reasons for building such a station are in the long run the least significant, but in the existing state of the world they are the most urgent. Unless a space station is established with the aim of preserving peace, it may be created as an unparalleled agent of destruction-or there may not be time to build it at all. Under the impetus of their considerations, perhaps the space sta- tion will become a reality, not a generation hence, but in-say- 1963. -Wernher von Braun, Across the Space Frontier (1952) If we had a base on the moon, either the Soviets must launch an overwhelming nuclear attack toward the moon from Russia two to two-and-a-half days prior to attacking the continental U.S., or Rus- sia could attack the continental U.S. first, only and inevitably to receive from the moon some 48 hours later sure and massive de- struction. -Brig. General Homer A. Boushey, director of advanced technology, USAF (as quoted by Aviation Week; September 29, 1958) T H E I L L I I ~ I I v t rA President Harry S Truman; White House radio address to the notion, May 26, 1944 "My fellow Americans ... "Early this morning, a giant rocket was launched from a secret military installation in Germany. Unlike the V-2 missiles and buzz bombs which have been previously launched by the Axis against France and Great Britain, this rocket was a manned space plane, piloted by a single human being. This space plane, which is known to have been code-named the Amer~ko Bomber, was believed to have been carrying an eighty-ton incen- diary bomb, which the Nazis intended to drop from high altitude above Earth's atmosphere into the New York City metropolitan area. "This sneak attack on American soil, the most scurrilous assault against a civilian population since the beginning of this war, was unsuccessful, It was foiled because our allies in Europe became aware of Nazi Germany's efrorts to develop such a weapon, and they warned us that an attack from outer space was forthcoming, thus allowing our own scientists to develop a countermeasure. "At 5:35 A.M. Pacific War Time on the West Coast, another space plane, this one built by the United States Army Air Force, was launched from a secret location in the southwestern United States. I can now tell you that this manned space-fanng vessel was christened the Lucky Linda, and its sing~e pilot was a young U.S. Navy captain named Rudy Sloman. In a feat of great daring, Captain Sloman flew his craft above Earth's atmosphere, whereupon he intercepted the Ameriko Bomber above the Gulf of Mexico and destroyed the invading space plane before it could complete its foul mission. "Captain Sloman then piloted the Lucky Linda through fiery reentry in American skies and successfully landed his cr-aft at Lakehurst, New Jersey, not far from the city he saved. Because of Captain Sloman's heroism and the great efforts of the scientists and engineers who designed and built his craft, the United States of America has nothing to fear from Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine. "I realize that many of you may be incredulous at this news, and that much of it sounds like the stuff of newspaper comic strips. Yet I assure you, as your President, that these events have occurred just as I have spoken of them. The first American has braved the aidess reaches of outer space, and surely there will be more to follow. 2 ALLEN STEELE "This is a great victory for our nation, a great day which will be re bered throughout history, and a great step into the future for the h race. "May God bless us, and thank you." e remem- he human O-N-E 211 S195 - 1834 EST atellite Beach, Florida, is a small town on Cape Canaveral, located on Route AlA at the doorstep of Patrick Air Force Base. Once a tiny fishing vil- lage whose original name is long forgotten, it received its more glorious nomenclature with the beginning of the Space Age and the arrival of the Air Force. Even so, it's still little more than a wide spot in the road: a handful of residential neighborhoods and retiree trailer camps, some strip malls, the inevitable fast-food restaurants. One has to drive north to Cocoa Beach or south to Melbourne before finding much more on the highway than a line of motels built for visiting ser- vicemen. The night was cool-64 degrees, chilly by Floridian stan- dards even at this time of year-but compared to the harsh Massachusetts winter he left behind two days ago, the man in Room 176 of the Satellite Beach Holiday Inn thinks it's a balmy summer evening. He had wanted to leave his motel room door open to allow in the sea breeze and the dull sound of the Atlantic surf from across the highway, but the plain- clothes security escort the company had assigned to him wouldn't hear of it. fust normal precautions, the private dick whom he had taken to thinking of as Mister Mom had said as 4 ALLEN STEEL he gently closed the door. I'd rather keep it shut, sir, if don't mind ... Yes, he minded. In fact, he minded just about everyth right now. This motel, purposely selected because it was of the way and unlikely to be found by reporters covering morrow's launch. Having Mister Mom for a roommate on last night on Earth for the next ten days, when he'd just soon be left alone until morning. And the job itself-Jes why hadn't the Germans picked someone else instead of hi Someone who really wanted to go to the Moon? But if anyone had asked what the single most irritat thing in his life was right now, the one thing that irked the most in a universe seemingly determined to make life sufferable, he would have replied that his pizza was late. It had been almost a half-hour now since Mister Mo whose real name, almost forgotten by now in his disdain, Mike Momphrey-had used his cellular phone to call so no-name pizzeria just down AIA and place an order for a inch pizza. A half-hour ago, for Christ's sake ... in Bosto would have been delivered ten minutes ago, and not just cause it came from Domino's. It was this kind of lousy se that drove him straight up the wall. No wonder the cou was going down the toilet; twenty miles from the place w rockets are launched into space, and you can't get pizza de ered before it's cold. Of course, he realized upon further reflection, if the cou wasn't heading down the tubes, he wouldn't be killing ti before he boarded a ferry rocket almost as old as he was. Pi and the American space program: they were much the sa thing these days, when you stopped to think about it.... He didn't want to think about it. He tried to shut it ou his head as he hunched over his Tandy/IBM, set up on a t at the far end of the room and wired into the room pho dataport. Meanwhile, his jacket off and cast aside to.exp the black leather shoulder-holster strapped across his s Mister Mom lay on the single bed near the door watching ATS Evening News on TV. The volume was turned down I but the man at the computer could still hear the anchorm droning voice ... THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE ir, if you erything was out ering to- te on his Id just as If-Jesus, d of him? irritating rked him e life in- late. r Mom- dain, was all some for a 12- oston, it t just be- sy service e country cc where za deliv- e country ling time as. Pizza the same it out of n a table phone's to expose his shirt, ching the own low, horman's I 5 American forces in Sarajevo reported heavy casualties today due to mortar assaults upon the city airport. Five Ma- rines were killed and six were wounded when a convoy was attacked at dawn. U.S. Navy warplanes from the U.S. S. Kitty Hawk bombed suspected Serbian strongholds in the hills west of the city and claimed to have inflicted considerable damage, according to Pentagon spokesmen, but ... Nothing new. This foul little undeclared war had been going on for almost four years now, and the nightly body count had long since assumed the innocuousness of football scores. He shook his head as he concentrated on keeping up his end of the real-time conversation. About ten minutes ago he had signed onto Le Matrix, and his girlfriend was on-line right now. Her cyberspace presence was the only thing keeping him from going completely apeshit. R u nervous? Mr. Grid had just asked. Her question appeared as a short line of type next to her screen name. Fuck, yes, I'm nervous! he typed. Using obscenities was a TOS offense on Le Matrix, but they were in a private room where no one else could hear them, and Mr. Grid had long since become used to his salty language. Wouldn't you be? In Los Angeles, entertainer and civil rights activist Michael Jackson led two thousand marchers through the city's South Central neighborhood, in a peaceful demonstration agal . nst alleged assaults against black residents by L.A. police offi- cers. At the same time, across town in Hollywood, Jackson's common-law wife Brooke Shields held a press conference in ftont of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, in which she turned down last week's Oscar nomination for Best Actress as a pro- test against what she called American apartheid ... Why nervous? I'd LOVE to go to the Moon!:) she responds. He scowls. He hates it when she uses smiley-faces. How many times has he told her that he considers cute on-screen emotons to be the last resort of the illiterate? Sure, she's try- ing to cheer him up, but still ... A spokesman for Bob Dole told reporters today that the former President saw no wrongdoing in recent disclosures that he had accepted sizable contributions from European- owned companies during his 1992 reelection campaign. Mr. 6 ALLEN STEELE Dole, present in Wichita this morning for the dedication c monies of his presidential library, refused to answer q tions from reporters ... Good, he types. Then you can go ... I'll stay here. Mr. Grid's response: LOL! u sure are cranky tonight. Wh your problem? Pizza is late, Thor200 replies, his fingers flying across keyboard. Ordered it 30 mins. ago. Getting pissed off. Pepperoni/olives/extra. cheese? He sighs, smiling despite himself. She knows him all well. Sometimes he wonders, if he were to ever walk int room where she was sitting, whether she would reco him immediately. How many visual clues has he revea about himself during the last eighteen months of their r tionship? His age? His wire-rim glasses? The slight pau around his middle, due in part to an addiction to one parti lar kind of pizza? How did you possibly guess? he says. King Charles arrived today in Washington, D.C., where was warmly greeted at the White House by President ton. While the two men sat down to discuss the propo Anglo-American Free Trade Agreement, Hillary Rodh Clinton escorted Princess Diana on a tour of the Library Congress, where the Magna Carta is currently on display. There's many things I know about you, m1ord. All y particular likes and dislikes. He raises an eyebrow. Indeed, she does; although they mi not recognize one another if they were in the same room gether, he was aware of precisely how she would respond the darkened bedroom of his ancestral manor, beneath s sheets with a fire crackling in the hearth nearby. He kno the touch of her hands, the taste of her lips, the athletic m cles of her body ... A TV commercial interrupts this train of thought: a harri housewife with a throbbing headache, screaming for fast f relief. He glances at Mister Mom; the security man inten watches this bit of Madison Avenue insipidity, apparen checking out the actress's boobs. To each his own, even if i banal beyond belief. . 0 A THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE ation cere- wer ques- ht. What's across the ff. im all too alk into a recognize e revealed their rela- t paunch e particu- , where he dent Clin- proposed Rodharn Library of splay ... All your hey might room to- espond in neath silk He knows letic mus- a harried r fast fast intently apparently even if it's 7 Another time, Countess, he types reluctantly. When I con- clude my business tomorrow eve, mayhap the Duke can come visit milady's chalet. A short pause, then another line appears on the screen: The Countess would be most honored by his presence. Perhaps his visit to the far north provinces will prove ... inspirational. He smiles and is about to reply in kind when there's a knock upon the door. Finally! He immediately scoots back his chair, then remembers his manners. BRB ... pizza man's here. "I'll get it," Mister Mom says, already on his feet and walk- ing toward the door, pulling on his jacket to hide the shoulder holster. "Who's there?" he calls out, his hand on the door- knob. A muffled reply comes from the other side of the door. The security man slides the window curtain aside an inch to peer outside; satisfied, he unlatches the lock and opens the door. The college-age kid standing on the walkway outside the room cradles a red thermal pizza bag in his arms; in the park- ing lot behind him is an old Honda Civic, its hazard lights flashing against the darkness. The kid glances at the order slip taped to the top of the bag. "Mr. Smith? Large cheese pizza, pepperoni and olives?" "That's it, yeah." Mister Mom digs his left hand into his jacket pocket, pulls out a small roll of bills. "That'll be ten-seventy-five, sir." The delivery boy reaches into the bag and carefully withdraws a brown cardboard box; as Mike peels off a ten and three ones and holds it out to him' , the kid simultaneously thrusts the box into his hands. A line of type appears on the screen: Pizza? Mmmm ... cut me a slice, will you? Caught off-guard, Mister Mom tries to balance the box and at the same time keep the money from falling to the floor. "Oh, and I've got a coupon here, too," the kid says as his right hand disappears into the bag. The security man is still at- tempting to juggle pizza and cash when the kid pulls his hand out of the bag once more. It is a weird sound-thufft! thufft! like tiny fists punching through a thick pillow-that makes him look up from the computer screen, just in time to see his bodyguard stagger 8 ALLEN STEELE back from the door. For an instant he thinks Mister Mom simply tripped over something, but then the cardboard slips out of his hands and topples to the floor, pizza spill sloppily across the burnt-orange carpet as Mike Momph falls against the dresser, his hands clutching at a large stain spreading across his chest, colliding with a heavy br table lamp and knocking it over as he ... He doesn't get to see the rest. In the next instant, two rush through the door before he has more than a fleeting 1 pulse to run into the bathroom and lock the door. The have wool ski masks pulled over their faces: this is the o impression he has of them before they tackle him and c him face-down against the floor, knocking the breath out his lungs. He gasps, unable to shout, as he feels the carpet burn agai his face. His arms are savagely yanked behind his back; glasses are dislodged, leaving his vision blurred and obscur He hears a thin plastic rip; then a length of duct tape wrapped tightly around his wrists, lashing them together. fore he can scream for help, gloved hands wrench his ja open and a wadded linen napkin is shoved into his mouth. In blind panic now, tears streaming down his face, he beg to flail his legs in an absurd attempt to crawl to safety. an instant he remembers, in a crystalline moment of pa induced recollection, the time Eddie Patterson beat him the playground back in third grade for calling him some st name-if only because this moment of utter physical he Icssness so closely resembles that one ... except that w Eddie Patterson whaled the daylights out of him, two do kids had been standing around, screaming their lungs until the teachers arrived to pull Eddie off him. This assault, on the other hand, is totally silent. No says anything; everything being done to him is as methodi as it is violent. Unde-r othe-r circumstances, he might have tually admired their professionalism and efficiency. The o voice he hears is that of the TV news anchor, resuming teleprompted monologue Dow that the commercials ... Final countdown is underway at the Kennedy Space Ce in Florida for what may be the last manned American ', 4i in has rd box pilling phrey e red brass o men ng im- e men e only crush out of gainst ck; his d. is er. Be- s jaws th, begins ty. For panic- up in stupid I help- when dozen gs out o one odical ave ac- e only ing his Center n mi s- sion to the Moon. Roxanne Leiterman reports from Cape I Canaveral. THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE Someone kneels against his back, pinning him to the floor. He feels a hand tear open his right shirt sleeve. Twisting his head around, he catches a glimpse of the delivery kid kicking aside the remains of the 1)izza as he eases the door shut behind him, being careful not to slam it. Efficient. . Last-minute preparations are being made for the launch of the NASA sDace ferry Constellation A routine month1v flivht to the Wheel, like so many others that have gone before it, except that it will begin the closure of a significant chapter in space history He feels an instant of wet coolness against his bare biceps, then a sharp pain as the tip of a syringe needle stabs into his arm. He shouts azainst the cloth lozenLe stuck in his mouth and almost gags. Four days from now, the U.S. S. Conestoga, the last remain- ing moonship in the American space fleet, will depart from Space Station One to "Turn it off," someone says The TV is switched off. He begins to feel lightheaded, al most giddy. In another moment, he doesn't care very much, for his universe is full of masked men with guns, and the only person who could have possibly helped him is wrapped up bloody bedsheets and being hauled out the door. No tip for the pizza kid, no sir . One of his assailants bends down to gently lift his head from the carpet and shine a penlight in his eyes. "He's down for the count," he says, his voice muffled by the ski mask. "Get that thing out of his mouth before he suffocates," someone else says. The cloth is tugged out of his jaws leaving his mouth dry and sore. He tries to speak, but the words just can't make their way from his brain to his tongue. "Water," he manages to whisper after a few moments of I considerable mental effort. His request is ignored "All clear on the street " "Okay, let's get him out of here before-" "Problem." This voice comes from somewhere above him 10 ALLEN STEELE "He's got someone on-line right now ... they're waitin an answer." "Shit." A long pause. "Okay, no problem. The new guy take care of it. He's coming in right now. Get the bag ove head." Mr. Grid, he thinks, although thinking is very hard t just now. The Countess is waiting for him. Strangely eno this is a comforting notion; she appears in his mind's eye pale goddess surrounded by a nimbus of soft light, her a reaching out to hold him against her bosom, casting asid evil and making the bad men go away. Someone kneels beside him, lifts his head once again. In last instant before a loose cotton bag closes around his f he sees the motel room open once more ... And he watches himself walk into the room. Then all is darkness and thick silence, and he falls aslee He waited until the team was gone, then quickly chec the room. They had done a good job, all things considered; snatch had taken less than three minutes, and aside from table lamp and the trampled remains of the pizza, there no apparent signs of struggle. No bloodstain on the ca that was important. The murdered bodyguard had b wrapped up in bedsheets and spirited away before he co make too much of a mess. A second man walked into the motel room. He had b standing outside, lingering in the shadows until the sna team was gone and he was certain that the area was sec He held the dead man's wallet in his left hand; all he ha do was to substitute his carefully prepared identification c and driver's license for the ones contained in the billfold. The delivery boy from the pizza place down AlA had ready called in sick from a nearby pay phone. He was so si in fact, that his vital signs had all flatlined, but that shoul bother the gators who would soon be discovering his cdrps an Indian River orange grove. - No one else had seen or heard anything. The only loose end was a line of type on the screen laptop computer. THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 11 ing for uy can er his to do nough, ye as a r arms ide all In the s face, leep. ecked ed; the in the e were carpet; been could been snatch Hey, what's taking so long? He walked over to the table and gazed down at the com- puter. u pig ... you're leaving nothing for me!! "Clean up that stuff," he said, snapping his fingers and pointing to the table lamp and the ruined pizza. "Put some fresh sheets on the bed, too." He sat down at the table, hesitated for a moment, then typed on the keyboard: Sorry about that. The kid wanted a tip and the pizza was cold. He hit ENTER and waited for a reply. Behind him, the secur- ity man's substitute was setting the lamp upright and clean- ing up the remains of the pizza. He had carefully studied his quarry for several months now, watching hours of surveil- lance videotape in order to imitate his mannerisms, listening to covertly recorded phone conversations to learn his verbal style. It hadn't been easy for his organization to unearth the on-line relationship between Thor200 and Mr. Grid, yet countless time spent on Le Matrix had finally put that misi- ecure. OK .see you tomorrow night! had to He sucked in his breath as he read this unexpected response. n card Mr. Grid was expecting to hear from him again within the d. next twenty-four hours, presumably from the Wheel; whoever ad al- this dink was, he was unlikely to accept no for an answer. Yet sick, he had no other choice except to reply. uldn't Okay . . . May be late, but I'll see you tomorrow night. se in Goodnite. Nite . . . have a safe flight.:) Mr. Grid's logon disappeared from the top of the screen a n of a moment later, leaving him alone in the private conversation i~,, room. He backed out of Le Matrix, closing cyberspace win- ing piece in its proper place. LOL! That figures! Did you cut me a slice? He thought for a moment; then his fingers dashed across the keyboard: AAAHere you go. Watch out, it's sort of drippy. A short pause, then: Mmmm! (Crunch.) just the way I like it! He typed: I have to go now ... gotta eat and catch a few winks. 12 ALLEN STEELE dows until he reached the opening screen, then signed c service. He took a deep breath as he settled back in the chair bogus security man was busy remaking the second bed spare linen he had found in the closet. "Everything okay asked, looking up from tucking in the comers. "Everything's cool." The doppelganger glanced at hi flection in the wall mirror above the bureau, once agaii miring the results of the extensive plastic surgery he undergone for this role. He was a perfect twin to the man had just been abducted; tomorrow morning, no one w know the difference when he arrived at Merritt Island to his place aboard the Constellation. There was only one small detail remaining. He pull pocket phone from his jacket and laid it on the table ne) the laptop computer. Then he tapped at the keyboard, er ing the computer's hard disk, searching the files until h( cated an encrypted subdirectory. Now he only had to wait. "Turn on the tube, man," he said, practicing his new vo "Maybe we can find a Star Trek rerun or something." d off the air. The ed with kay? " he t his re- again ad- he had an who would to take pulled a e next to d, enter- til he lo- ew voice. Transcript of closed hearings before the Armed Services Commit- tee, United States Senate, June 15, 1950, Washington, D.C. De- classified by White House executive order, October /, / 993. From the testimony of General Omar Bliss, US. Army Air Force and former director of Operation Blue Horizon, and Dr. Wemher von Braun, Technical Director, US. Army Guided Missiles Develop- ment Group, Huntsville, Alabama. Sen. Clayton J. Ewing (D., IA): The chair recognizes Senator Nixon. Sen. Richard M. Nixon (R., CA): Thank you, Senator. General Bliss, Dr. von Braun, thank you for taking time away from your busy schedules to be with us here today ... Dr. von Braun: You're welcome, sir. Gen. Bliss: The pleasure is all ours, Senator. We're glad you invited us. Sen. Nixon: I'm certain that you gentlemen, along with your colleagues at the Huntsville facil~ty, are aware of the great interest in manned space flight that has been generated recently within this country. I've read a book that was published last year ... um, The Conquest of Space, by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell, which I understand was something of a bestseller ... and my children have been botheHng me to take them to see a new motion picture which has just opened. I think it's called The Roce to the Moon.... Dr. von Braun: It is called Destination Moon, Senator. With all due respect. Sen. Nixon: Uh, yes, that's what I meant ... Anyway, these forms of, ah, popular entertainment, along with the wartime success of Operation Blue Horizon under General Bliss's command, has led many people to believe that we could send men to the Moon within the next few years. On the other hand, there are just as many people who claim that putting men on the Moon is highly unlikely. This includes President Truman, who has called ~t ... and I quote from yesterday's Washington Star . . . "that crazy Buck Rogers stuff." So I ask you gentlemen, which is it? Gen. Bliss: Senator Nixon, when our militar,/ space prognam got started nine years ago under the late Dr. Robert H. Goddard, a number of people here in Washington who were cleared for Blue Horizon be- l6ed that it was impossible to put a manned payload into orbit at all. Dr. von Braun met similar skepticism from certain officials of the Gen-nan High Command. Less than three years later, skeptics on both sides were 14 ALLEN STEELE proven wrong when the Ameriko Bomber and the Lucky Lindo launched on the same day. Now, I won't pretend to claim that we could send men straight t 1 10 Moon, using present-day technology. Both the book and the mot' ture you mentioned presuppose the existence of atomic-powered ets, and we simply do not have those yet. But even at our current of astronautical know-how, we do believe it is possible to build a fl large, three-stage manned rockets, which in turn could be used to a permanent orbital platform-a space station, if you will-which enable us to construct vessels to take men to the Moon at some in the not-so-clistant future. The position paper given to the memb this Committee gives the details of our proposal. Sen. Nixon: I've only had a chance to skim your report, Genera it's quite impressive. So is the estimation of the costs involved. Ten dollars is a considerable amount of money. Dr. von Braun: This is only an approximation, Mr. Senator, but cludes costs for building three ferry rockets and the space station. It' a long-range program spread over the next ten years, with compl of the space station-the Space Wheel, we call it-scheduled for This means that outlays for each fiscal year would average only one dollars. Sen. Ewing: Thank you, Dr. von Braun. The chair recognizes Se McCarthy. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R., WI): Talking about flying to the is Just fine and dandy, gentlemen, but I'm much more alarmed by developments in Russia. just three weeks ago the Communists nounced that they had launched their first satellite-a Sputnik, the it-into outer space. This seems to me to be much more critical putting some people on the Moon, as laudable a goal as that may be von Br-aun, can you tell us whether this Sputnik poses a possible t to the security of the United States of America? Dr. von Braun: The satellite the Soviet Union has launched does in itself, pose an imminent threat, Mr. Senator, The satellite contains more than a shortwave radio transmitter. However, it does demon the potential ability of the Soviet Union to place larger satellites~, or manned spacecraft of their own, in orbit above Earth, Sen. McCarthy: And in your opinion, Dr. von Braun, could on these ... um, satellites ... carry an atomic bomb? Dr. von Braun: Yes, Mr. Senator, it is possible that it could d Former members of my rocketry group at Peenemunde are now wo ndo were ight to the otion pic- red rock- nit stage a fleet of d to build ich would me point embers of neral, and Ten billion but it in- n. It's also ornpletion for 1960. one billion s Senator the Moon d by new ~,nists an- k, they call htical than ay be. Dr. ible threat does not, ntains little monstrate s, or even Id one of uld do so. w working THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE the Soviet government in Russia, and I can attest to their technical expertise in these matters. Sen. McCarthy: Then what good does it do for the United States to spend ten billion of the American taxpayers' money to build rocketships or a giant wagon wheel in outer space? The logic escapes me, Dr. von Braun. Gen. Bliss: Senator, if you'll permit me to explain ... One of the major purposes of the proposed space station would be to conduct high- altitude military surveillance. As you can read in the position paper, the space station would be placed in an equatorial orbit 1,075 miles above Earth, where it would complete a full orbit once every two hours. Al- though we feel it's unwise to position the station so that it could pass directly over the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain countries, this means that station personnel could easily monitor naval activity in the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as ground activity in China, the Philip- pines, and the Indonesian subcontinent. Sen. McCarthy: So you believe we can use this space wheel of yours to keep tabs on what the Communists are doing in Southeast Asia? Gen. Bliss: Yes, sir, I believe we can. Additionally, an orbital telescope aboard the space station, similar to ones presently being used at ground- based observatories for astronomical research, could be deployed for spying on Russian military activities. We believe that space telescopes like this could detect the presence of heavy-armor convoys, or even be re- fined enough to see their air bases. Dr. von Braun: But this would not be the only purpose of the Space Wheel, Mr. Senator. It could also be used as a ... uh, a stepping-stone, if you will, to the exploration of the Moon. In twenty-five years, perhaps less, we could use it for the construction of ships for a lunar expedition. In time we could even use the Wheel for the purpose of sending men to the planet Mars... Sen. McCarthy: That's fine and dandy for kiddie movies, Dr. von Braun, but right now this Committee is far more interested in the military uses of outer space. And for the record, I'd like to know whether your fellow Germans at the Army's Huntsville facility have been checked for possible flo r ties to the international Communist conspiracy. Gen. Bliss: I assure you, sir, the backgrounds of my men have been thoroughly examined by the FBI, as part of their admission to this country under Oper-ation Paperclip.... Sen. McCarthy: I want positive proof of this, General Bliss. Gen. Bliss: And I'l I be more than happy to provide it, Senator. For the 15 16 ALLEN STEELE record, though, I'd like to repeat something I said over a year ago t House Committee on Science and Technology: Military advantag always rested on taking the high ground, and space is the ne ground. America must take this hill, lest it risk losing its freedom. Sen. Nixon: I quite agree, General.... o to the ntage has new high 4 2/15/9S 1947 EST T-W-0 he house was almost forty years old, and nothing about it seemed atypical of Florida beachside cottages built in the fifties. Made of weatherbeaten pine whose boards had warped and been replaced and repainted many times, it was a two-story red split-level with a garage and a storage area on the ground floor and two bedrooms, a den, and a small walk-in kitchen on the second floor. A TV antenna rose from the slanted flat roof; sliding glass doors led to a wide porch elevated on stilts above a crushed- seashell driveway. The house was isolated from the rest of the island by low marshlands, and the white sands and dunes of the va- cant beach lay only a few yards away from the back door. There was nothing unusual about the house except for its location on Merritt Island, near the southern perimeter of the Robert E Kennedy Space Center. Within sight of the porch were the old ICBM test pads, now either dismantled or used primarily for sounding rockets; gantry towers for Hercules- and Titan-class cargo rockets rose from the coastline a little farther north, while farthermost in the distance, near the giant white cube of the Vehicle Assembly Building, were the twin Atlas-C launch complexes. Once, during the fifties and sixties, there had been dozens of houses like this one, built by the Army Corps of Engineers 18 ALLEN STEELE to house military and civilian personnel who had wo countless millions of man-hours building those launch p When the space program started winding down in the se ties and the U.S. Space Force was phased out and grad replaced by NASA, almost all of those cottages were stroyed, most by bulldozers or the occasional hurricane, a by prototype Tomahawk cruise missiles during offshore tests. Only this lone house was allowed to remain stan for although no one had lived here year-round in quite s time, it had earned a small place in history~ eloquently s marized by its name. It was called, very simply, the B House, and it was the last place on Earth where many a nauts stayed the night before they left home for outer spa The traditional pre-launch barbecue had been held ou the porch earlier that evening; as usual, it drew a small of invited guests-senior pad technicians, launch control the mission director, and so forth-and for a little whi almost seemed to Gene Parnell as if the good old days returned. Virtually everyone at the barbecue was an old C hand from way back when the space program was young the new frontier was there for the taking; they all had stories to tell, and they loved to party. Yet as the sun set and the last few beers were cracked o a full moon began to rise above the gentle Atlantic surf a seemed to Parnell that everyone was reminded of just much had been lost already, and how much more woul lost tomorrow. The jovial atmosphere became sullen and rose and, finally, just a little ugly when Joe Clark and K Baldini, two firing-room techs who had worked alongside other at Launch Control since the Project Luna days, got a political argument which soon disintegrated into a shou match that got dangerously close to being settled with until the mission director separated the two men and them to go home. They weren't drunk-they were too pr sional to get ripped the night before a launch-only an the Moon and what their old dreams had bought them, their demoralization was quietly shared by many there. At any rate, the fight effectively ended the party. Every left shortly after that, stopping by to shake hands with Par h pads. seven- adually ere de- e, a few e Navy anding, e some y sum- Beach y astro- space. out on I group rollers, hile it ays had China ng and ad tall open, and it st how ould be nd mo- Keith c each ot into d f outing th fists nd told profcs- ngry at m, and ryone arnell THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 19 and give Judith a quick hug before climbing into their jeeps or sports cars or family vans and blowing the hell out of there, because the Beach House harbored just one too many ghosts for anyone to hang around the place for very long. This left Gene and Judy alone in the place for the night. In days past, they might have been joined by another astronaut and his or her spouse; they would have shared the Beach House, sleeping in the separate bedrooms until a few hours before dawn when someone drove out to fetch the crewmates and bring them to Operations and Checkout for breakfast, the final mission briefing, suit-up, and walk-out. But Jay Lewitt, the Conestoga's flight engineer, was the only other crew member who had made an appearance, and he and Lisa had left long before the party had broken up. Cristine Ryer didn't come at all, though, and the absence of the mission pilot was noted by Judy as they cleaned up the paper plates and empty beer cans left on the porch. "She's not a big favorite around here, is she?" Judy was in the kitchen, scraping gummy baked beans and gnawed pork ribs into a compost can before tossing the plates into the re- cycling bin. "I mean, nobody seemed particularly upset when she didn't show up." "What, honey?" Gene Parnell pretended not to hear by dumping an armful of Bud Light cans in another recycling bin near the sink. How everything had changed; he remembered when, during another Beach House party many years ago, the pilot of Eagle Four had provided entertainment by lining up empty beer cans on the porch railing and inviting everyone to pick them off with his favorite Smith & Wesson deer rifle. That type of thing didn't happen anymore, now that NASA had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the era of cnvi- ronmental consciousness I didn't quite hear you." "You heard me." Judy dropped the last plate into the bin and turned to the sink to wash her hands. "No one likes Ryer, and I don't think she likes them either, but nobody wants to tell me why." "That's because no one likes Cris," he said, hoping that would get her off the subject. "Don't play stupid with me. . . 1~ I 20 ALLEN STEELE "I'm not playing stupid, babe," he insisted, lying for all 1 was worth. "Cris just isn't ... I dunno, she just isn't much ( a team player. She follows her own drummer and people kno- it. That's all," Judy didn't say anything for a few minutes. She picked up box of detergent and carefully poured a handful of powder ini the dishwasher, which was filled with pots and skillet Watching her, Parnell was suddenly struck by how mu( older she now seemed, how gray her hair had become. In tl thirty-four years they had been married, he had never real perceived his wife as anything except the sexy college girl he met shortly after graduating from Annapolis. But that w 1961 and this was 1995; their daughter Helen was now old than Judy had been when they walked beneath the cross swords of a Navy honor guard on their way out of the weddi: chapel. Judith was no crone, but neither was she the lit' Wellesley student he had met at a long-forgotten mixer. Without realizing he was doing so, he found himself cc templating his reflection in the louvered glass of the kitch window. Yeah, he had grown old, too. Despite a lifelong re men of jogging two or three miles each morning before bre, fast, there was a small pillow beneath his T-shirt where I waist had once been. His crew cut was salt and pepper, a the short beard he had cultivated years ago was now as wh as beach sand. He made the pillow disappear for a moment sucking in his gut, but nothing could be done about 1 crow's-feet that appeared at the comers of his eyes when did so. The last time he looked in a mirror, he saw Cary Gra now George C. Scott was staring back at him. "I've heard things about her," Judy said as she latched dishwasher door and pushed the button; the ancient May grumbled like a freight train leaving a siding. "I've heard st. ... ah, one of the boys. Is that true?" It took Parnell a moment to realize that she was stillSalk about Cristine Ryer. He shrugged as he turned away from window. There was still some beer left in the fridge; he I had only two this evening and, what the hell, he wasn't guy doing the flying tomorrow morning. "Been listeninj I g for all he i't much of ,ople know ).icked up a iowder into id skillets. 4ow much )me. In the &ver really ge girl he'd t that was now older he crossed ac wedding e the lithe iixer. .mself con- he kitchen :elong regi- fore break- where his )epper, and w as white noment by about the S when he ,ary Grant; .atched the mt Maytag heard she's till talking y from the ~ge; he had wasn't the ~stcning to THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 21 the grapevine again, haven't we?" he said as he pulled out a can. "Want one?" "Sure." Judy caught the Budweiser he tossed her; even at fifty-four, she was still quick on her feet. Leave it to all those tennis games with other NASA wives to keep her body sound and her hearing sharp. "And don't try changing the subject." "I'm not." He leaned against a counter as he popped open a can for himself. "I'm just avoiding it, that's all." "Gene ... "Look, babe. . ." He sighed. "Remember Tommy Sidwell? The guy who rescued twelve men aboard the Wheel when that blowout happened in ... what was it, '66? The press made him into a hero back then. Cover of Newsweek, lunch at the White House with Nixon, the whole bit. Then some asshole from the Chicago Tribune discovered that hd had a boyfriend and put it all over the front pages." Judy nodded, her face somber. "I remember." Gene nodded. "I knew Tom ... and, yeah, I knew he was queer. So did a lot of other guys who worked with him. It didn't change things for us, because he was a good astronaut and ... well, when you're up there, that's all that really counts. But after the press blew his cover and Carson started with the jokes, the Space Force threw him out so fast he didn't have time to empty his locker." Judith didn't say anything. She recalled Tommy Sidwell; once on the short-list for Luna One, reduced within a year to making cameo appearances on Laugh-In. He had died of acute alcoholism ten years ago, his obituary a footnote in the same newspapers that had brought him low. "So you don't ask ques- tions like that," Gene went on, "because it's nobody's busi- ness what people do when they're not on active duty. What Cris does on her own time-" "Is her own business," Judith finished, nodding her head. "I understand. " Parnell stared down at his beer. There was more to Cristine Ryer's situation than Judith could have possibly picked up from the tennis court backscatter ... but this was none of his business, even if Ryer was scheduled to be his left-seater a few days from now. It was all NASA internal politics, anyway, and III i 22 ALLEN STEELE he didn't want to ruin his last night on Earth for a wh talking about it. He took a deep breath. "Hey, what do you say we go to the beach for a while? Catch a little moontan?" Judy made a face. "Aw, Gene, cmon ... I hate it whe want to. . ." "Just for a walk. Leave the blanket behind." She h, sisted making love on the beach ever since the second after they moved into their house on Captiva Island, just years ago. Despite the romantic allure of that interlude i Gulf Coast dunes, she had been itching for days afte "C'mon, babe," he said, stepping closer to her. "My inten are strictly honorable . . ." "I bet." She grinned as she pushed him aside and head the porch door. "If I get another rash, I'll send my gyneco to beat you up." "Deal." Gene glanced through the open door of the rr bedroom as he followed her toward the porch. The den delier cast a ray of light across the sagging mattress o king-size bed, and he smiled to himself. He hadn't made any promises about what he might do I In many ways it was a night like many other nights: light rippling upon the low tide, casting silver highligh the waves as they crashed onto the beach; the distant lig freighters and passenger cruisers, the smell of salt air brine and seaweed and, just a few miles up the shoreline rocket itself, temporarily captured within angled search beams, a tiny silver-blue dart poised on its fins. None of this was unfamiliar to Parnell. In fact, it was al akin to d6ja vu, although the last time he had gone up w a short visit to the Wheel in connection with his dAties a Flight Director of the American half of Project Ares. Tha been back in '74; three months later he had resigned fro tive flight status, and in the twenty-one years sinc6, h reported to work at an office which wasn't inside a pre compartment. Sometimes he had actually, relished the that he didn't have to subconsciously worry about the s of every breath he took, or that the food on his plate was THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 23 e wanted to eat today and not part of a rigorous menu, or that he could take a shower every morning or flush a commode as often as he wanted without having to fret about water conser- vation. Sometimes ... but not always. Walking along the beach, shells crunching beneath the soles of his moccasins, cold ocean surf occasionally washing up around his ankles, he looked up to study the familiar winter constellations-Virgo rising from the east, Leo almost directly overhead, a thin ring around the Moon which almost touched Mars, hinting at rain showers later tonight-and yet his gaze kept returning to the distant rocket. It had been a long time. Maybe just a little too long. "Penny for your thoughts?" Judy asked. He shrugged. "A nickel will buy you my life story." "Heard it already. Been around for most of it." They had been silent since they left the Beach House, walking side by side along the dark shore. "Scared about tomorrow?" "Uh-uh. Not about tomorrow." Nor was there any reason for him to be scared. The Constellation was a reliable old workhorse; it had made at least three or four dozen orbital missions in its lifetime, and Atlas-C's dated back to 1967. It wasn't like the Atlas-B's, whose third-stage nuclear engines had frightened the piss out of everyone who had ever ridden in them, until they were finally decommissioned in '65 fol- lowing not-unjustified protests by Barry Commoner and Com- mon Cause. And it sure as hell wasn't the Discovery, but then again the Discovery had been permanently grounded by White House directive after her sister-ship, the Challenger, had ex- ploded shortly after liftoff. That was back in '86; since then no one had even suggested using solid-rocket boosters for man-rated spacecraft. The Atlas-C ferries, though, had been built to last. Al- though they were now somewhat obsolete, no one had ever been killed riding one of them. Better safe than sorry: so went the general consensus. On the other hand, the Atlas-C repre- sented the last time anyone within NASA had seriously pro- posed trying anything new at all.... "Not worried about tomorrow, huh? Well, I suppose that's ile by down n you ad re- night t a few in the rward. ntions ed for logist aster chan- on the later. moon- hts on ghts of ir and e, the hlight almost as for as the at had om ac- he had essure e fact source s what I 24 ALLEN STEELE good." Judy took a deep breath as she folded her arms a her chest. "Got a letter from Gene Jr. yesterday. He sa broke up with his old girlfriend but now has a new one.' "Uh-huh," Parnell said. He was still gazing at the di launch pad. "What's her name?" "Her name's Spike," Judith said calmly. "She's the singer with an L.A. band called The Doggy Position. says she's got some interesting tattoos ... oh, and he sa wants to quit his job and open a porn shop in Hollywood that nice?" "Well, yeah, I guess he ... what?" Judy punched him in the arm. "Sucker!" "Jesus, honey . . ." He rubbed at his biceps wher smacked him. Their younger child had been a constant s of worry to them since the age of fifteen, but after bei pelled from two private schools, dropping out of one co being busted for selling marijuana at another, hitch across the country behind a Moby Grape concert tour as proclaimed Grape Nut, and finally cleaning up his act to down in Los Angeles and manage a retro-sixties bou there was little the kid could do anymore that would su Gene. Except maybe this . . . "You're not serious, are yo "No, I'm not serious. He's still got his job and Ver even though I still think she's a little slut." Judy laug little as she nuzzled up against him and gave his arm a kiss. "Just wanted to make sure you're still with me." "Umm ... yeah." He put his arm around her, and rcg his earlier thoughts about her as an old lady. Middle-a not, Judy Parnell the astronaut wife was the same wo Judy Lindstrom the Ivy League debutante. Same wicked of humor. "So long as you're not serious about the porn "Just kidding. I promise." Her laughter died and sh quiet for a moment. "You're worried about the mission, you? Don't bullshit me, sailor . . . something's eating y inside." It always came down to this: the eleventh-hour att nerves. The crossing of the Rubicon, so they say, exc had been down to this particular river before. In '62, w had received his orders to join the F-4 Phantom wing .M Albs s across e says he ne. c distant the lead ion. Gene e says he ood. Isn't here she antsource being ex- e college, itchhiking r as a self- ct to settle boutique, Id surprise e you?" Veronica, laughed a rn a small e.11 d regretted le-aged or woman as cked sense orn shop." d she was sion, aren't ing you up r attack of except he 2, when he ing aboard THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 25 the Enterprise during Vietnam; in '65, after he had been re- cruited into the USSF and been posted aboard the Wheel for extended astronaut training; in '69, when he went to the Moon as mission commander of Luna Two; in '72, when he returned to the Moon as commander of Tranquillity Base. All those times, he had accepted his duty to his countM leaving his wife and kids behind. And every time, he had taken a last stroll on the beach with Judy.... t 7S, Until 1973, tha 1 when they asked him if he wanted to go to Mars and he said no. By then he was sick of space; all he wanted to do was stay home to raise a family, play a few holes of golf, and go to sleep every night next to his wife instead of simply talking to her once a week on a secure downlink. He turned down Mars and was given an office job in return, and since then, with the exception of one quick trip to the Wheel to shake hands with some Russian cosmonauts in the spirit of McGovern-era detente, the only time he sat in a pilot's seat was in the nine-year-old single-engine Beechcraft Debonair he used for commuting twice a week from Fort Meyers to the Cape. And now, closing in on his sixties, here he was again. Same beach. Same wife. Same Atlas-C. Same goddamn Moon "Late for the sky," he murmured. Judy looked at him sharply. "What did you say?" "Old song," he said quietly. "From Helen's record collec- tion ... Jackson Browne, I think. I kind of liked it, so I taped it and put it in the car. Used to listen to it now and then." He tried to recall the lyrics, but couldn't summon them up: "Nah, nah, nah nah nah . . . late for the sky, tah dah, dah dah dah..." Judy giggled and he cast her a stem look. "I'm sorry, hon," she said, "but if that's as hip as you can get . . ." "Would you rather I started singing ... uh, the Sex Pistols? Hip enough?" She smiled sweetly at him. "Dear, they broke up ten years ago. Johnny Rotten does Toyota commercials now." "Oh, that's who he is? Okay, so I'm hopeless. Gimme a break." He took his arm from her shoulders and tucked his 26 ALLEN STEELE hands in his pockets. "The point is, I don't know if I'm reall, cut out for this anymore." Judy slid her hand into the crook of his left arm. "C'mon Gene. You aced the physicals and you did fine during retrain ing. You told me yourself that flying the simulators was ~ breeze. Conestoga's the same ship you've commed before, an( nobody's asking you to do much more than ride the old heap What's the problem?" The problem was that he was being sent up as a living relic of the glory days, not unlike the Constellation or the Cones. toga. A little older, not quite as obsolete, yet nonetheless sent aloft as a last-gasp public relations stunt for a federal agency that had lost its sense of purpose along with stable funding from Capitol Hill. His first flight assignment in more than two decades was to carve the epitaph for the American space program, and the only items that had been omitted from the, crew's personal manifest were a hammer and a chisel. The rocky plains of Mare Tranquillitatis would be the tombstone for a dream that had died hard. He glanced away from the launch pad. His eyes traveled across the ocean waters until, reluctantly, he found himsev, gazing up at the trapper's moon. The old whoreson himse i~ the Man in the Moon, was leering down at him from across a, quarter of a million miles of vacuum: Hey, buddy, I'm waitingi for you ... cmon back and we'll trip the light fantastic, oni last time. "No problem," he murmured, lowering his head. /'Ju thinking aloud, that's all." Judy seemed to want to say something, but she remained quiet. Instead, she tugged against Gene's arm to turn hini" around. "Okay, sailor," she purred. "Time to go to bed. If I let you stay up much longer, you'll miss your wake-up calP, Turning around, Gene allowed his wife to begin dragging him back toward the Beach House. He glanced at his watch- manufactured in Japan, he reflected, but wasn't e ery~thin V, these days?-and noted that it was nearly nine o'cloc . H was due at the O&C Building at three-thirty A.M. sharp., "Christ, I'm still wide-awake." "You won't be after I get through with you," Judy said. Shl 0 eally as a and heap. s scnt gency nding than space the e the veled Mself self, ross a iting c, one "Just ained him If I let if d. She THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 27 let her hand slip from his arm and briefly caress his buttocks, and Parnell grinned despite himself. Some rituals were still as valid today as they had been twenty years ago. Sometime in the middle of the night, he awoke from an unremembered dream to hear rain pattering on the roof. He stared at the ceiling for nearly an hour, thinking of nothing except how he would miss this simple, commonplace sound, before he fell asleep in his wife's arms once again. kil From The New York Times; April I i U.S. LAUNCHES GIANT PASSENGER ROCKET; SUCCESSFUL MAIDEN FLIGHT ORBITS EARTH AS WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES NEW SPACE FORCE By Joel Brodsky (Special to The New York Times) MERRITT ISLAND, Fla., April I O-Rising on a column of smoke and flame amid a thunderous roar which drowned out the excited shouts o onlookers, the U.S.S. Constitution was launched this morning from the U.S. Air Force Proving Grounds at Cape Canaveral, carrying six men on a test mission into Earth orbit. Six hours later, after circling the planet twelve times at a record altitude of 185 miles, the giant rocket's winged third stage successfully landed like a jet aircraft on a runway only a few miles from the launch pad. When it lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:16 A.m. EST, the Constitu- tion was an enormous three-stage rocket, 265 feet tall and weighing 7,000 tons-the height of a 24-story office building and the approximate weight of a light cruiser. It was propelled into the sky by 14,000 tons o liquid fuel, and less than a minute after ignition it broke the sound barrier as it hurtled over the Atlantic on its way to orbit above the equator. The rocket's first and second stages, discarded by the Constitution dur- ing its fiery ascent, automatically par-achuted into the Atlantic Ocean, w ere they were recovered by U.S. Navy vessels. During the flight, the rocket's six-member crew radioed brief reports to receiving stations around the world, telling anxious listener's that they were safe and that their condition was fine. Captain Charles B. Yeager, the mission commander and pilot, then guided his cr-aft: through the criti- cal retrofire and reentry maneuvers through Earth's atmosphere, where- upon the third-stage glider gracefully touched down on a specially constructed runway on the north end of Merritt Island, "We feel just great," Captain Yeager told reporters shortly after he and his teammates emerged from their craft. "It was a nice, smooth ride all the way." Other members of the crew were Commander Edw. A. Graham, Jr., F, I 30 ALLEN STEELE co-pilot; Lt. Casey Hamilton, flight engineer, Lt. Kenneth A. Moo mechanic; Sgt. Richard Dunning, mission specialist; and Dr. Walte flight surgeon. One hour after the Constitution touched down in Florida, the House formally announced its intent to ask Congress to approve to split off the Air Force's space program into a separate military which would be called the United States Space Force. In a brief stat to the press, President Eisenhower claimed that the mission's succ proved that the technological capability exists to pursue "a vigoro ambitious program for the conquest of outer space." "I have no further doubts now that this country has the ability t a manned space station," Mr. Eisenhower said. "Because such a will be vital to our national security, I believe that this admini along with Congress, should approve the proposed Pentagon establish a U.S. Space Force as the principal government agency this noble effort." Mr. Eisenhower said that he will ask Congress to approve his build a fleet of five "ferry rockets" like the Constitution over the ne years and outlay $ 10 billion over the next seven years for the co tion of a wheel-shaped station that would become operational b The House and Senate had approved a similar plan in 1953, b President had vetoed the earlier proposal, saying then that the t ogy for advanced space missions had not yet been proven. No offical statement has yet been released by Premier Bulg other Kremlin officials in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic United Nations ambassador, Sergei Titov, was quick to remind re that the U.S.S.R. sent an unmanned probe to the Moon almost fou ago. He also pointed out that the Constitution's orbital tr-ajectory three times over Russia and its eastern European satellites. "The goals of my country in space have always been and shall peaceful," Mr. Titov said. "By its very name, however, President hower has signified the hostile nature of the U.S. Space Force, calling this a 'conquest,' American imperialism has been blatan vealed." White House spokesmen declined to respond to Mr. Titov's re e, flight r Kahn, ~White ~ a plan ~nanch, tem t ~ss I ~us an 0 build station ration, flan to Dehind bill to (t four )Struc- 1963. ,it the -hnol- lin or ;. Th e Orters (years :)ok 'it ~rnain :isen- A by y re- iarks. T - H - R - E - E 211619S-024S EST n the dark hours before dawn, automobiles began moving out from the mainland communi- ties of Titusville and Cocoa and the Orlando suburbs, their headlights forming a swift luminescent current that flowed eastward toward the Kennedy Space Center. Each bearing a NASA employee window sticker, they finally became two solid lines that drove over the Indian River on the NASA Causeway West to Merritt Island, where they passed citrus groves and wild marshes as they converged toward the distant otlights of the launch center. The four-lane road was wet from the brief rain shower that had passed over the Cape a couple of hours earlier; headlights cast slick reflections off the asphalt as windshield wipers beat away the last drizzle. Along the way they passed tents and RV's parked on the shoulders of the causeway: the campsites of the faithful, the relative handful of diehard space buffs who still came from near and far to witness major rocket launches. Not too many years ago, so many people used to show up for launches that the U.S. Space Force had to issue camping permits three or four months in advance, and even then many people tried to camp out in the grassy median between the road lanes. This was no longer necessary; over the last decade the crowds diminished 32 ALLEN STEELE in size and number until now only a few dozen pilgrir journeyed to Merritt Island. As she drove past the NASA Visitors Center-itself begi ning to look seedy and run-down-Cris Ryer noted that an- space protesters had once again insinuated themselves amoi the spectators. Six or seven cars on the right shoulder of tl road surrounded a few tents that could have been mistak( for a campsite of space buffs until one spotted the signs ar banners: LEAVE THE MONEY ON EARTH and ABOLISH NASA NOW! ar STOP THE MADNESS! and (her personal favorite) NO ATOMS ON TF MOON! Most of the protesters were sound-asleep, curled up i sleeping bags inside tents made of lightweight material which were spin-off products of the space program. A bearde( long-haired young man in jeans and a Mexican serape stoo by the roadside, pounding metronomically against a leathe Indian drum as he solemnly stared at the NASA employee reporting in for the morning shift. "Hey, Cris! Look!" Laurell turned around in the passenge seat to point at the hippie. "It's my cousin Igor! Look, it's rnl cousin! Quick, pull over ... "Laur. . ." Cris began. "No, c'mon! I swear to God, it's Igor!" Before Cris could stop her, Laurell rolled down the DeLorean's side window and stuck her head out. "Hey, look out!" she screamed from the car. "Look out! There's a gator right behind you!" The kid jumped a few inches, nearly dropping his drum as' he looked back in terror. Laurell was in convulsions; Cris had, to roll up the window for her, she was laughing so h "You're such an asshole," Cris murmured, grinni herself. Only Laurell could pull off such a gag; a the in college before she had entered law school, she ha for convincing almost anyone of the most bald-face talent for instant persuasion had made her a good tri I lawyer. ,ard ng ~ esp~t ater maJo4 d a knadJ d lie Th" a it had also helped to convince a lot of conservative malecol. leagues in the Florida Bar Association that she was straight. "That I am. . . " "That you are. Now shut up and look serious for the nice man." Laurell got herself under control as Cris slowed down for the security checkpoint at Gate 3 and rolled down the drivt .ims 'gin- inti- iong f the aken and and 4 THE ,ip in ~rials rded, ;tood ather )yees Ingei FS my I could ,v and -n the espite major knack . This twyer. [e col- Lght. e nice down e driv- THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 33 er's side window for the uniformed guard who stepped from the gatehouse to shine a flashlight inside the DeLorean. A white-helmeted MP stood behind him at curbside, his right hand lingering near the .45 automatic holstered in his Sam Browne belt. Cris held up her plastic ID badge; Laurell found her VIP Visitor's badge and showed it through the windshield. The guard carefully examined both badges, then checked them off on his clipboard. "Thank you, Captain Ryer," he said as he gave her a quick salute. "Good luck on your mission." He waved them through the checkpoint; the MP added his own salute as they drove past him. Laurell glanced back at the guards. "Gee, and he didn't even ask if we were sisters." Cris smiled again. Laurell knew she was nervous; ever since they had left their house in Titusville, Laurell had been mak- mg wisecracks, singing along with the classic rock station in Orlando and talking back to the DJ, all in a futile attempt to take the edge off the moment. It hadn't always worked, but then again Laurell had always played the irreverent cut-up next to Cris's disciplined Air Force officer. The sisters remark was an old standby, going back to the beginning of their relationship almost three years ago when they had met at a private gym in Titusville which catered co- vertly to the local gay community. There weren't too many places in the area where two lesbian women could go during a long courtship without being accosted by straight single men, and fewer still where an obviously gay relationship would be tolerated. Thus the alibi of sisterhood; both Cris and Laurell were in their late thirties, and-until Laurell had dyed her hair-both were blondes, tall, and athletic-looking. Since they vaguely resembled each other, the pretense of being sib- lings made a good cover story. But there were differences. Cris glanced again at her lover, still not quite used to Laurell's recent change in appearance. A few weeks ago Laurell had sprung almost ten grand for cos- metic breast reduction, a surgical operation that had left her almost as flat-chested as a prepubescent teenager. Laurell in- sisted that she'd done so because big tits had put her on an 1, 34 ALLEN STEEL unequal footing-no pun intended-with her male countei parts at the law firm. It was one more yuppie fad that hai emerged from California, popular among female attorneys h particular, but Cris wasn't quite certain that her companionl newfound androgyny had nothing to do with their relation. ship. "You're such a guy," she murmured. Laurell looked away from the window. "Aw, c'mon, Cris ... you're not still pissed, are you?" "Oh, no, no, I'm not pissed." She gripped the leather steer- ing wheel more firmly as she shook her head. "I mean, I was married to Carl for two years, wasn't I? I should be used to a' male chest by now ...... "Jesus. You're still pissed." Laurell closed her eyes, putting her hand to her forehead as she sighed. "Look, I've explained to you ... it's just something I did, all right? I always hated having boobs. I didn't like sleeping on them, I didn't like it when they started to sag, and I really didn't like guys checking me out all the time ...... "I know, I know." Cris had heard it all before. "But i could have worked out a little more, maybe..." "It wouldn't have done a thing. Those marnmaries re. there for keeps." Laurell smiled a little. "Hey, at least I had enough money to get it done right. If I only had five grand in the bank. , ." "Then you would have been an Amazon. Right." It was a old joke that Cris was tired of hearing. "You're such a bitch sometimes. . "You got it. I'm a bitch. That's me." The line of traffic was, creeping steadily toward the cloverleaf intersection of the east-west causeways and the Kennedy Parkway, where th highways split in four directions at the center of the island,' Two hours before dawn and there was already a small gridloc e t1d n te le within KSC. At least the rain had finally let up; with any luc~ the clouds would move out to sea long before the launch win- dow closed. Cris found herself staring in the direction of the Atlas-C launch complex, where the Constellation awaited her arriv~. One more mission, and she would be another ex-Air Force THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE nter- t had ~ys in Lion's ition- ris. - - steer- I was d to a atting lained 'hated like it -cking if you I were t I had 'and in was an Rc was of the ~re the. island. ridlock I k' uci` h win- ktlas-C arrival. .r Force 35 astronaut with the abbreviation "ret" next to her name and former rank. it wasn't supposed to end this way. Crash land- ings, catastrophic launch aborts, Criticality One accidents- those risks she had willingly taken over the past fifteen years, well aware that any one of them could snuff out her life in a second. It had never occurred to her that falling in love would be the finish of her career. She felt Laurell's hand on her arm. "I'm sorry," her compan- ion said. "I didn't mean to get on your case like that. It's just that I hate to see you . . . " Her voice trailed off. Cris forced a smile as she grasped the back of Laurell's hand. "It's okay," she said softly. "Don't worry about it. We'll get through this. just one more mission, then I'll be home and we can start all over again." "If only you'd think about going public, getting those bas- tards to admit what they've done. . . " Cris shook her head as she returned her hand to the steering wheel. She was past the cloverleaf; the sprawling headquarters area was coming up on the left, with Operations and Check- out just past the main office building. "We've been through this before ' babe. Maybe we'd embarrass them a little, but no one would lose their jobs and we'd be eaten alive by the press. You want to hear dyke jokes about us on Letterman? That's all that would happen." "But they'll get away with it!" Cris turned the wheel, pulled into the wide parking lot of the O&C. "They're not getting away with anything, sweet," she said, choosing her words carefully. If things got fucked up somehow, at least Laurell could plead innocence. "Trust me ... they're not going to get away with it." Laurell stared at her. For a moment, Cris was afraid she was going to ask her exactly what she meant. If she did, Cris knew that she might tell Laurell something that she shouldn't know, if only because she hadn't unburdened herself to any- one thus far. Beneath the cool, professional barrier she had erected, there was a white-hot ember of anger, kept alive by contempt for the intolerant assholes who had done this to her.... 36 ALLEN STEELE And a need for revenge. But Laurell didn't ask. "Okay," she said, slumping b her seat as Cris pulled into a reserved parking space in of the building. "If that's what you say, I'll trust you." "Good girl." Cris glanced at her watch. Ten minute three. She had already caught flack from the mission di for insisting on spending her last night at home, and P was probably pissed off about her missing his little bar at the Beach House. She didn't need any more shit about late for the breakfast briefing. Fuck it. What were they going to do ... fire her? She unbuckled her seat and shoulder harness, then re into the back seat for her attach6 case. "You know how to the commissary, right? Near the VAB. Grab a bite t then get somebody to show you to the VIP viewing st Tell 'em . . ." "Tell 'em I'm your sister?" A wan smile. Cris hesitated. "No," she said flatly. "Tell 'em you'r wife." Then she returned the smile. "It doesn't matter more, does it?" Before either of them could start crying, Cris pulled L close and embraced her. People were walking past th NASA employees heading for their shifts; under the brig dium glare of the parking lot lights, they co uld see int car. She hesitated, but then realized that it no longer mat very much. She kissed Laurell farewell, not furtively as she had so times before when they had been in a public place, but all the passion she felt for the one true love of her life. rell's arms moved around her shoulders as her soft lip sponded with equal ardor. "Ten days," Cris whispered as she broke the kiss and g disengaged Laurell's arms. "Ten days and I'll be home, promise I'll never leave you again." I Laurell reluctantly slid back into her seat. "God, I you.// "I love you too, sweet. Be good." Cris found the door ha popped open the gullwing and shoved it upward, then cra k in -.ont ),ast I Itor riell cue 'ing hed get eat, ids. my ny- rell ,ar, so- the red Iny ith au- re- .tly d I )ve Ile, led THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 37 out of the car pulling her attach6 case and its treasonous se- I cret behind her. "I'll bring home a present ...... Then she turned and began striding down the walkway to the entrance of Operations and Checkout, where a uniformed MP was waiting to hold the door open for her. Captain Cristine September Ryer, USAF, NASA Astronaut Corps, reporting for her final mission. Suit-up took only a few minutes. The blue one-piece astro naut jumpsuit over shorts and T-shirt, tucked into high-top sneakers, was preferable to the clunky old pressure suits she had worn during basic training. Cris spent several minutes stuffing her pockets with pens, notepads, penlights, food sticks, and assorted other paraphemalia-she had packed her duffel bag yesterday, and along with everyone else's it had al- ready been loaded aboard the ferry-then went down the corri- dor to the infirmary, where two doctors gave her the usual pre-launch physical which told them nothing that they didn't already know. When she was done, her next step was supposed to be join ing the rest of the crew for the breakfast briefing. However, -Cris had been careful to forget her mission notebook, making it necessary for her to walk back down the hall to the wom- en's locker room. The room was empty, as she had antici- pated, but she looked both ways as she reinserted her mapetic keycard into the slot of her locker and opened i The 3.5-inch diskette concealed within her attach6 case bore the handwritten word "Tetris" on its label. Indeed, if someone booted up the disk and typed that word into a key- board, they would find a fully functional copy of the popular Russian arcade game. Yet the other program on the disk, not listed in the directory, was a game whose stakes were much lugher. For a moment Captain Ryer hesitated. She could easily walk into the bathroom, snap the diskette in half, and shove the remains into the trash can; no one would be the wiser and she would no longer be taking this terrible risk. But all she had to do was remember her anger and the reasons for it, and it was 91 settled. She zipped the diskette into her left thigh cargo 38 ALLEN STEELE pocket and checked to make sure that it didn't bulge wh( she flexed her leg. Then she took a deep breath, pulled hi notebook out of the locker, and slammed the metal door shu A uniformed NASA security guard checked her ID badg against his list, then saluted and held open the door of th O&C's astronaut mess. The room was long and brightly lit b- ' fluorescent ceiling fixtures, sterile except for dozens of mis sion emblems painted on the beige walls. They ran the courst of American manned space exploration, some dating back t( the first manned orbital flights of the early fifties: the Atlas. A, B, and C test programs, the Space Station One construction missions, the various Eagle flights of Project Luna, all the way up to Project Ares. Shortly after the completion of the Mars program, though, individual patches were no longer designed" for each major mission; someone in the NASA bureaucracy, in his infinite wisdom, had decreed that this cust om was a' quaint holdover from the old USSF days and that space had become too routine for such trivial matters as honoring crews with their own mission insignia. And it cost too much, be- sides. So the practice had declined. Not long afterward, so too ha the space program. As expected, most of her crewmates had already arrived and were seated together at a long dining table, eating the tradi- tional pre-launch breakfast of steak and eggs. Sitting next to them were the pilot and co-pilot of the Constellabon, tw .ris put c anonymous ferry drivers who barely looked up as ( e notebook down at an empty place on the table between them, and Gene Parnell. It seemed to her that their conversation fal tered a bit when she made her entrance, but that was to be expected; Parnell was an old geezer who had been dragged out of semiretirement for one last hurrah, and the two rocket apes would probably drag their knuckles all the way to the launch di pad. Damn. She missed Laurell already. . Cris excused herself and went up to the buffet table, where she passed up the high-cholesterol junk in favor of a cinnamon bagel and a fruit cocktail. There were butterflies in her stom- ach; her hand shook slightly as she poured a glass of tomato A AM THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 39 ,e when Red her lor shut. D badge ~r of the Jy lit by of mis e course back to ~e Atlas !truction the way he Mars designed =cracy, rn was a pace had ng crews tuch, be- ) too had rived and ~he tradi- , 9 next to 'ion, two I ~s put her ~en them iation fal- Os to be ~gged out I pket apes ~e launch ile, where -innamon her stom- Df tomato juice. She heard coarse laughter behind her, but didn't care to know what it was about. She tried to tell herself that it was just another attack of launch nerves, but she could feel the diskette in her jumpsuit pocket rubbing against her leg, and she suddenly imagined that Parnell had Superman's X-ray vi- sion and could see right through the nylon. if that were so, the X-rays would scrub the disk's hidden program, and that would certainly take care of things, wouldn't it ... 7 Cut it out, she told herself. Get a grip. She willed her hands to be steady and told the butterflies to get a job, and when she returned to the table she felt a little better. "Sorry I'm late," Cris said as she sat down. "Got stuck in the morning rush." One of the ferry pilots-his name badge read cAPT. P.A. KINGSOLVER-grunted noncommittally as he cut into his me- dium-rare steak. His CO-pil0t, LT. COMDR. H. M. TROMBLY, cast her a sullen look over his coffee mug. Neither of them said anything, but they didn't have to; it wasn't difficult to tell that they'd heard a bit about her personal life through the Cape grapevine. Although there had been no outright harass- ment, she knew that there were quite a few guys in the astro- naut corps who didn't much care for the idea of flying with a dyke. Don't worry, she said silently as she avoided their eyes. You won't have to much longer... Parnell gave her a quick smile. "Don't worry about it," he said. "You're not the only one running late. One of our passen- gers hasn't shown up yet either." "Hmm? Who's that?" Gene wasn't bad. Perhaps he was over the hill for this kind of thing and had been assigned to this mission as a media overture, but they had worked well to- gether during training and she reluctantly had come to like him, thinking of him in a patriarchal sort of way. If he had heard the buzz around the Cape about the Internal Affairs Of- fice investigation, he hadn't said anything about it to her. "Dooley." Parnell checked his watch. "He's staying at a motel on Satellite Beach, I think ... must have gotten tied up in traffic coming in." "Yeah, I hear you," Jay Lewitt said. "Route 3 was murder." 40 ALLEN STEELE Conestoga's flight engineer pushed back his plate as he rubbed a napkin against his lean, brown face. He lived in Cocoa Beach off Route AIA, a few miles south of the space center. "Lisa floored the pedal, but she still couldn't get us through the mess." "Is Elizabeth coming to the launch?" Cris asked. "Yeah, she is." Jay and Lisa had a fifteen-year-old daughter. "It took a little bit of begging, but her principal finally let her out of classes to see her daddy go to the Moon." "Gee," Parnell muttered, shaking his head. "Used to be that a kid whose dad was an astronaut didn't need permission to skip school." Jay shrugged as he picked up his coffee mug. "Times have changed, Commander. I think her bus driver gets more re- spect." He took a sip as he added, "Better job security, that's for damn sure." "I guess. Well, if our young hacker is running late, it gives us a chance to eat, at least." Parnell nodded toward Ray Har- vey, the mission director. He was seated at the far end of t table, tapping impatiently at his leather folder as he ent tained questions from the two other civilian passenge "Speaking of food, I'm sorry you missed my barbecue, Cri We had a good time ... wish you could have been there." I bet you do, she thought to herself as she spread marmalade on her bagel. What's a good party without the token queer? She reflected, not for the first time, that there were probably as many closet homosexuals working at NASA as there were African-Americans with astronaut wings, but at least Jay was protected by the Civil Rights Act ... and no one would ever call him a nigger to his face. "I'm sorry I wasn't there, Com-~ mander, " she said diplomatically, "but I had some family mat- ters Trombly coughed loudly as he hid a smile behind his hani rs i "I thought you were divorced, Captain Ryer," Kingsolve ai keeping a straight face. "You mean you've found some else? Cris ignored him; any reply she might make would only fuel to the fire. She was gratified to see both Parnell and Le itt pretending to study their notebooks. Farther down t e A! bed ach Lisa the Lter. her ~hat ~ to iave re- iat's ;ives Han the iter- ZeTS. -ris. dade Por? iably were was ever :om- mat- iand said, eone y add Lew- i the THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE Bromleigh gave her a short, professional nod. 41 table, however, Ray Harvey was openly glaring at her. He hadn't wanted to keep her on this mission. Given the chance, he would have yanked Cris two months ago, when the IAO presented their report to NASA's Astronaut Office. By then, however, there was little he could do about it; she had already been more than halfway through training for this mission and there was no one else qualified to take her place. The rest of the astronaut corps rated to pilot Conestoga had either been reassigned to other jobs or had resigned from the agency; a couple had even taken jobs in Germany for Koenig Selenen. For this last NASA mission to Tranquillity Base, she and Parnell were the only NASA lunar astronauts available on short notice. Ray Harvey knew that. He was stuck with an old fart and a dyke, and at least one of them disturbed his shit. Suddenly removing her from the mission, though, would have raised too many public-relations questions from the man and woman sitting next to him. Noticing the silent exchange, Berkley Rhodes and Alex Bromleigh glanced Cris's way. She smiled for their benefit: Rhodes beamed back in reSDonse and Cris kept smiling as she returned her attention to her break- fast. Well, okay, so he's got five minority members on this mission. An old guy, a black, a lesbian, and two TV reporters. Howpolitically correct "Our media darling," Lewitt murmured out of the corner of his mouth, smiling in Rhodes's direction before he glanced back at Parnell. "Yknow, I think she actually put on makeup for this." "I wouldn't doubt it." Parnell pulled a pair of bifocals out of his breast pocket as he studied his notebook. " Cronkite would have had a duck if he'd ever met her I "Now, don't you start with the stories again." "It was back in sixty-four," Parnell began loftily as he turned a page, "and I was aboard the Wheel when Walter-Ol' Wait we used to call him-came un to interview us for . He stopped as the door swung open and a plump young man strode into the mess hall. "Ah, and I see the prodigal son has 42 ALLEN STEELE Cris looked up as Paul Dooley, dressed in astronaut blues and carrying a laptop computer in his right hand, walked toward the table. She hadn't seen very much of Dooley at the Cape-he had spent most of his training period at Koenig Sele- nen's facility in Bonn-but she noticed that he seemed to ha lost a little weight. Well, everyone did ... but Dooley still came off as reotypical computer geek, despite his attempts to commun cate an air of cyberpunk raffishness. He goggled at everyone from behind the round lenses of his wire-rim glasses as he stalked toward the last remaining place at the table. "Okay, okay, so I'm late," he said impatiently. He knocked over a salt shaker with his computer case as he placed it on the table, and didn't bother to set it upright; so much for good luck, Cris thought. "Fucking traffic on the road ... can't be- lieve this shit . . ." "Good morning, Mr. Dooley," Ray Harvey called out. "H nice of you to join us." "Wouldn't have missed it for the world, Ray." Dooley ne vously tossed back his thin black hair with his hand. "Loa, I'm really fucking sorry for getting here so late, but dunno, where can I get some coffee?" Parnell tipped down his bifocals, stared at Dooley, and i- lently pointed toward the buffet table. Bromleigh, in his dual role as ATS cameraman and network news producer, pulled an industrial Sony camcorder from beneath his seat and stood up, apparently getting ready to grab a shot of Conestoga's cre eating breakfast together before their historic mission. B t ley Rhodes automatically primped for the camera as Doolo apparently miffed that no one was catering to him, shuffle over to the buffet table in search of caffeine juice. The two ferry jockeys continued to watch Cris as if she'd come fr* another galaxy with the intent of exterminating all male l&- forms on planet Earth. "Having fun?" Parnell whispered to her. "Loads," she replied just as quietly. She was mildly surprised when he reached out to pat, ep arm. "Don't worry about it," he murmured. "A short trip ui, ilues Aked t the ele- have e ste- ,luni- ryone [ as he bcked [ it on r good rilt be- ,"How y ner- 'Look, and si- ~lis dual pulled d stood 21S crew Berk- Dooley, shuf fled [he two ne from iale life- ML,~, THE RANOIIII I ITY AITI:RNATIVr Al a short trip back . - . it'll be a milk run." He removed his hand and picked up his coffee mug. "Might as well enjoy it, After this, you'll need to learn German to go to the Moon again." "Uh-huh," she said. And maybe the Germans won't throw me out for what I do in my private life.... Ray Harvey cleared his throat and stood up. Conversation at the table died as he opened his notebook. "Gentlemen, la- dies ... if I can have your attention, we'll start the briefing. Liftoff is currently scheduled for 0730 hours. Transcript: The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite; broadcast September 30, 1963 Cronkite: Good evening. If this doesn't look like my usual desk in New Yo rk ... well, it isn't. Tonight, we're transmitting live from Space Station One, in orbit 1,075 miles above Earth, which was officially completed two days ago. If we pan our television camera slightly to my left, you can see out a porthole window in the station's circular rim ... and, yes, there it is, the planet Earth, over a thousand miles away. If you look carefully, you can make out the Florida coastline beneath a cloud formation. We won't be able to look at it for very long, because the space station is rotating on its axis and soon this window will no longer be pointing toward Earth, but it's a magnificent sight for you folks back home. With me now, in our temporary CBS studio in the station's mess com- partment, is General Chet Aldridge, the United States Space Force com- mander in charge of Space Station One. General Aldridge, how does it feel to have the Wheel finally operational? Aldridge: It feels great, Walter. It's been seven years since this project was begun and four years since the first sections were launched from Cape Canaveral, so we're mighty glad to have the job done at last, and mighty proud of the men who built Space Station One. Cronkite: When President Nixon made his televised address to the nation yesterday, he said that the purposes of the Wheel were not en- tirely military in nature. As a military officer yourself, can you comment on that? Aldridge: It's not for me to dispute the words of my Commander In Chief, Walter, and so I'm not going to get into a fight with the President ... Cronkite (chuckling): No, sir, I'm not asking you to do that ... Aldridge: ... but the President is quite correct. Although Space Station One has the primary military mission of maintaining surveillance over ... uh, countries who may pose a threat to the security of the United States, our goals are also scientific in nature. Now that the Wheel has been completed, our next major task will be the construction of the three lunar spaceships which will be sent to the Moon by the end of this dec- ade, That's our next goal, sending men to the Moon, and we plan to omplish it just as well as we did with the building of this station. I P& 46 ALLEN STEELE Cronkite: You mentioned surveillance, General. Can you tell me e actly what you're looking for down there? Aldridge: I'm sorry, Walter, but that's classified infon-nation, and I' also sorry that I can't show you the Earth Observation Center. Howev I can tell you that, even as we speak, Space Station One is passing abo Cuba, If Premier Castro happens to be watching this program right no this should give him something to think about. Cronkite: On the lighter side of things, the network has received so interesting mail from our viewers over the past few days, since we a nounced that we would be doing a live telecast from the Wheel. On letter in particular comes from a young man, Michael Walsh of Baltimo Maryland. Mike tells that he's a fan of a science fiction TV show on o of our competing networks, and he says that everything he has seen o that program looks just like the pictures that the Space Force has se from the Wheel. To quote him, General, he says, "How do I know th isn't just a fake?" Aldridge (laughing): Well, Mike, we watch that show up here, too, an to borrow a favorite phrase used by one of the characters, Dr. Spock, just ain't logical, Cap'n . . ." Cronkite (chuckling): At risk of supporting a rival network ... Aldridge: Didn't mean to do that, Walter. The Space Force doesn want to play favorites, Anyway, Mike, I'll show you something they can do in Hollywood. Here's a pitcher of water, you see, and here's a gla on the table. Now, if I were to pour water into the glass down on Eart it would fall straight into the glass, right? But up here, we've got somethin the scientists call a Coriolis effect, which involves the physical propertie of objects within a rotating environment, like the Wheel. Cronkite: Bring the camera in a little closer, Bill ... Aldridge: That means everything inside Space Station One is spinnin but since objects close to the floor are spinning a little bit faster tha objects higher up, it means nothing is moving at quite the same rate. S If I r-aise the pitcher just a little bit higher above the table and pour a I bit of water toward the glass ... Cronkite: Whoa! Watch out there! Aldridge: Sorry, Walter, didn't mean to splash you ... so you s Mike, the water goes kind of sideways and misses the glass entirely.. Cronkite: And lands in my lap instead. Thank you for the demdnst tion, General. Aldridge: My pleasure, Walter ... sorry to make a mess. Cronkite: We'll return for a tour of Space Station One after station identification.... I' ro ver, ove owl "ne an_ )ne ore, ne on ,ent ,this and (, "It ~sn't :an't 7.,Iass arth, .hing rbes ning, than :. So, ~ittle see, stra- NEI& ation F-0-U-R 2/16195-0414 EST here were two men named Paul Aaron Dooley. One of them was a young man born in Austin, Texas, in 1962, whose life coincided with the rise and fall of the Space Age and the coming of the Digital Age. Something of a prod- igy, at least by his own reckoning, he was sixteen when his father gave him an Apple I as a high-school graduation pres- ent; he was twenty when he graduated from the University of Texas with a B.S. in computer science and had made a modest reputation for himself within the fledgling hacker subculture on the Internet, where he had established himself as Thor200. Several years later, while he was working on his doctorate at MIT's artificial intelligence lab, Paul Dooley was one of a handful of darkside hackers who were investigated by the Se- cret Service in connection with a series of break-ins on Milnet, the Department of Defense computer network. He had only been peripherally involved with the Milnet intru- sion, but Thor200 was a well-known logon in the hacker sub- culture and Dooley was therefore easy to trace; when the Secret Service began making raids, his was one of several doors broken down by federal agents. Although he was ques- tioned for several hours at the agency's Boston office, he was never charged with anything-mainly because, in exchange 48 ~ALLEN STEELE for legal immunity, he narked on the real perpetrators of t Milnet break-in. Several self-styled cyberpunks went to j as a result, but Paul Dooley remained free, although Thor2 maintained a much lower profile on the net after that. Following that close shave with the law, Dooley conc( trated on his true interests, the development of advanced programs for semiautonomous teleoperated robots. It A Dooley's contention that many of the jobs on the Moon c rently performed by astronauts could be accomplished, wi greater safety and at less expense, by robots guided by Ear based operators using virtual-reality technology. Dooley's work gained the attention of the German ae space corporation Koenig Selenen GrnbH. The Germans w interested in using lunar resources for the construction solar-power satellites, an idea first proposed by American s entists but largely ignored by U.S. government and indus which were backing away from space exploration in the wa of the Challenger disaster and the gradual dissolution of t American civil space program. For Dooley, at least, this was just as well. By the time was getting ready to receive his doctorate from MIT, his pr pects for future employment were limited to designing co puter games for consumption by a generation whose idea adventure was booting up a new Sega cartridge ... or, perhaj teaching a new group of hacker wannabes the technical ski that would make them employable by a European or Japanq, company. On the other hand, Koenig Selenen offered him opportunity to develop his theories to their full advant The young cyberneticist was on the Koenig Selenen payroll soon as he received his doctorate; the company allowed to remain in the United States, working as an "independ consultant," although, in fact, he was one of its leading searchers. Several years later, when the company successfu negotiated with the U.S. government for the sale of Tranai lity Base, the person it turned to for upgrading the moon b obsolete computer systems was Paul Dooley. That was one Paul Dooley: an arrogant, trash-mouthed, s proclaimed boy genius who had no known pals or girlfrien except for a few dalliances on Le Matrix, whose only hob e .e .e A 5, Is n THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 49 was collecting comic books, and who had entered astronaut training for the Tranquillity Base lunar mission with consider- able reluctance. That Paul Dooley was now being held prisoner in the ce- ment basement of a rented house outside Orlando, Florida. He had been stripped naked, tied to a wooden chair, and placed under hot lights by a handful of men who been method- ically torturing him for several hours now. The 500 milli- grams of Ketamine that had rendered him unconscious earlier that night had now produced, as anticipated, a nightmarish series of hallucinations; at times he believed he had died and was now in the depths of Hell, being tormented by demons straight ont of an old EC comic. The illusion was reinforced by his captors, who were steadfastly depriving him of both water and sleep while playing, at high volume, radio sound- effects tapes of gunshots, human screams, car crashes, and wild animal noises. A sharp tongue laden with sarcasm and bluster may be in- timidating to fellow intellectuals, but it doesn't mean a thing to people who prefer to use fists, pliers, and rubber hoses, and Paul Dooley was not a strong person, It didn't take long before agony, drugs, humiliation, confusion, and outright terror took their toll. One by one, he answered their shouted questions, sometimes telling his captors far more than they needed to know in exchange for the smallest sip of water or, at the very least, temporary surcease from pain. It had taken several hours, but once he started talking, there was little he didn't tell them. Though his face was now a bloody, swollen wreck and there were few inches of his body that were not covered with purple welts, he still held onto the dim hope that he would soon be set free, unwitting to the fact that, in the end, the only mercy he would receive from these faceless men would be the bullet one of them would eventually fire into the back of his skull. Even as he spilled his guts about everything he knew regard- ing his mission, there was one final secret that he hadn't dis- if only because his captors had neglected to ask And then there was the other Paul Doole who, except fo pr ~'M 50 ALLEN STEELE a surgically altered appearance, hundreds of hours in carefu study of basic mannerisms and speech patterns, and vast ex pertise in computers, shared nothing in common with t man whose identity he had assumed. At the same moment that one Paul Dooley howled in agon as an eight-inch length of garden hose was repeate slammed against his stomach, another Paul Dooley pretend to stifle a yawn behind his hand as he listened to Ray Harv begin the final mission briefing. The mission director stood in front of a blackboard, shuf- fling papers on a clipboard in his hand and trying not to loo at the camcorder pointed in his direction. The blackboa d ' r" W, v marked with a neat timetable of the main mission e ents. wag redundant with the printouts in everyone's notebook' and the briefing itself was a formality that could have eas'' been dispensed with, were it not for the presence of the camera. Dooley found himself smiling at the pretentiousness of t ceremony. How far NASA had fallen, to be catering like t, to the fickle wishes of the news media. "Following liftoff," Harvey continued, "Constellation wil rendezvous with Space Station One, where the crew transfer to the Wheel. At about the same time. . He paused to glance at his notes. "Uh, 1300 Greenwic the German shuttle Walter Domberger will launch from th Kourou space center in French Guiana. The Domberger wi ascend to equatorial orbit and meet you at approximatel Y't same time, pending no difficulties. The remaining memb(,~ of the outbound crew, from Koenig Selenen GmbH.. Harvey took another peek at his notes. "Mr. James Leamore, Mr. Uwe Aachener, and Mr. Markus Talsbach ... uh, will join you aboard the Wheel." He consulted his clipboard. "At 2200, GMT, you are scheduled for a live TV transmission Wheel. Ms. Rhodes will be officiating, naturally." The camera swung to zoom in on Berkley Rhodes, wearing a pair of reading glasses and pretending to lo interested. "The transmission will last approxima minutes. Commander Parnell, Captain Ryer, during this ti you'll be interviewed for the ATS Evening News." I I THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 51 Dny ,dly ded Vey luf - ook was s; it As, sily TV the this will will the will , the bers lore, join 1200 L the was ~eply ten tirne I No mention of himself, Dooley noted, which was just as well; the less time he spent in front of a camera, the better. The plastic surgery which had changed his face was good enough to get him past the security checkpoints, and so far no one in the room had voiced any doubts; still, he had been cautioned to shy away from the cameras. Dooley's mother was dead and his father was a senile old man in a Houston nursing home, yet there was always an off-chance that some- one back home might detect a subtle difference. Harvey cleared his throat. "Conestoga is scheduled for launch at 0800 GMT tomorrow morning, pending final check- out of the craft. It will be a two-day flight to the Moon, with touchdown at Tranquillity Base posted for Sunday, February 19, at approximately 0700 GMT. Following successful land- ing, the crew will enter the base, where Commander Parnell and Lieutenant Lewitt will reactivate the base's CLLSS ... ah, closed-loop life-support systems. If no difficulties are encoun- tered with the base's reactivation . . ." "It wouldn't dare," Parnell murmured. Several people at the table chuckled as Harvey, caught off-guard, feigned amuse- ment. Dooley felt a twinge of pity for the man; NASA should have put a public affairs officer in charge of the briefing. Harvey once again consulted his clipboard. "If there are no difficulties, shortly afterward ... uh, I 100 GMT ... the crew will board tractors and travel to the Teal Falcon bunker, where Mr. Dooley will assist the flight team in reactivating the launch control systems." Harvey coughed nervously. "This is, of course, the most del- icate part of the mission, and although Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Bromleigh will be recording the procedure, no live TV trans- missions will be allowed until the arms control inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency standing by at Von Braun Center are assured that Teal Falcon is under local control. " The mission director stopped and put the clipboard under his arm. "Mr. Bromleigh, turn off your camera and put it away now, please." Alex Bromleigh reluctantly unshouldered his camcorder placed it on a table. When Harvey was satisfied that the sm P. 52 ALLEN STEELE camera was off, he nodded to the security guard standing n the door. The guard opened the door and gave a quick, sil nod to someone standing in the corridor. The civilian who had been waiting outside stepped into ready room. A leather attach6 case was handcuffed to wrist. He strode across the room to Ray Harvey and held the attache case. Harvey carefully dialed the combinat lock and opened the case; inside were two scaled manila en lopes along with a pair of small red keys, each bound by a h of stainless-steel chain. Withdrawing the envelopes and keys, Harvey silen walked to the table, where he gave one key and an envel to Gene Parnell. Parnell glanced at the envelope, then tuc it into a pocket of his notebook without opening it; he t unzipped the front of his jumpsuit, looped the key ch around his neck, and dropped the key out of sight. He loo back at Harvey and nodded once. "Thanks, Gene," Harvey said. He held out his hand, Parnell grasped it without a word. Cristinc Ryer looked up at Harvey expectantly, but he peared to be deliberately ignoring her. Instead, he wal around to the other side of the table, passing Dooley until, stopped behind Jay Lewitt's chair. Lewitt raised his eyebrows in apparent surprise as the fl director extended the other envelope and key to him. "Li tenant," Harvey said softly, "I know this is unexpected, bu you'll take possession of the second key, your country consider it a great favor." Dooley heard Cris Ryer's sharp intake of breath. Glan at her from across the table, he saw her face turn bright She opened her mouth as if to object, but then shut up, Dooley caught a glimpse of Parnell's hand snaking bene the table to tightly clasp her wrist. He carefully kept his own reaction under control. This an unexpected turn of events. His masters would have to informed of what had just happened. If they didn't know about it already, of course. He was aw that he was only one card in the deck, and much of the ga had yet to be revealed to him. ear ,lent the his A up Ition ,nve- . loop ntly elope icked t then chain c)oked he ap- valked ntil he 2 flight "Lieu- 1, but if ry will lancing ,ht red : up, as )eneath 'his was ve to be as aware he garne And yet ... "Thank you, sir." Lewitt accepted the second key and looped the chain around his neck, then placed the sealed enve- lope inside his notebook. As Harvey turned his back to the astronauts, Lewitt looked straight at Ryer and gave a small shrug. Ryer glanced away, visibly trying to control her temper. "Mr. Bromleigh, Ms. Rhodes, that was off the record," Har- vey said as he returned to the front of the room. "In your re- ports, you'll note that the keys to the Teal Falcon bunker safe were assigned to two unspecified members of the Conestoga flight team, and their identities will not be revealed for rea- sons of national security. Understand?" Thq two ATS correspondents traded a look. "Yes s r, we do," Bromleigh said. Rhodes hesitated, apparently wanting to ask the obvious question-Why was the mission's second-in- command passed over?-but she seemed to think twice and kept her mouth shut, quietly nodding instead. "Very well," Harvey said. "Mr. Bromleigh, you may continue filming." As Bromleigh hoisted his camcorder once more, the mission director checked his clipboard. "At 1200 GMT, personnel at the Teal Falcon bunker will stand by for a televised address from the White House, when the President will deliver a speech to the American public regarding final disposal of Teal Falcon. These remarks will be relayed via NASA's Deep Space Tracking Network. Once this phase of the mission has been completed, the members of the news media will be allowed to transmit their reportage." He took a deep breath; his eyes darted toward the "By this time, authentication codes will have been transmit- ted from NORAD, and the keyholders will have opened the safe and removed the fire-control keys. On signal from the Whi(e House, they will then launch the Teal Falcon missiles on the solar trajectory which Mr. Dooley will have pro- grammed into the master guidance system." Harvey lowered the clipboard. "Following launch, the crew will return to the base, where Mr. Dooley and Mr. Leamore will continue their work in handing over control of Tranquil- lity Base to Koenig Selenen GmbH. If all goes well, the final phase of the mission will end at 1800 hours GMT t 1 0 THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 53 54 ALLEN STEELE for return to Space Station One." He hesitated. There was a strained silence in the roo made more uncomfortable by the heat of Cristine Ryer's barely suppressed rage. "Gentlemen, ladies," he said slowly, for the first time exposing some shred of unrehearsed erno- ing day ... um, Monday, February 20 ... when the American flag will be struck from the base and Conestoga will launch tion, "I know this is a difficult mission for all of us. I've been with the lunar program for twenty years now, and no one wishes to see it end any less than I do ...... "We've noticed," Parnell muttered from behind his hand. If Harvey heard the remark, he didn't acknowledge it wi anything more than a quick glance in Parnell's direction. 'T the record, though, I expect you to serve your country as bly on this final mission as you have throughout your car and on behalf of the launch team I wish you godspeed and good luck." If he was expecting any applause, he didn't receive it. The mission director was another NASA bureaucrat spouting pa- triotic homilies for public consumption; everyone knew it, in- cluding Harvey himself. He coughed uncomfortably and shuffled away from the blackboard as Bromleigh lowered his camcorder and Rhodes checked her notes. Parnell stood up t and sauntered to the buffet table while Lewitt reopened his notebook, deliberately ignoring Ryer's hot gaze. The two shut. tle jockeys murmured between themselves. There were a few minutes left to kill before walk-out, just enough time for an- other cup of coffee before they hit the road. Watching them, the other Paul Dooley once again realize how easy it was to play traitor. Although his employers d their own agenda, he was in it strictly for the money. T314 was a time, in a former life, when he would have claimed re' olution as his ultimate objective; now his motives we purely mercenary and apolitical. Five million dollars and #r' comfortable life in another country was fair exchange for, wearing another man's face for ten days, and fuck the dogmr he had once espoused. ii", And yet, he reflected, his task was made easier by lth~ knowledge that he was taking advantage of a country that haJ,,- a lican ~nch DO T; yer )Wly, emo- been ) one [nd * with "For capa- treers, ~d and ~t. The ng pa- T it, in- ~y and red his Dod up -ied his *0 Shut- ,e a few f or an- realized rers had ~. There ned rev- es were rs and a ange for e dogma r by the that had THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 55 grown apathetic toward its own achievements and former as- pirations. It wasn't terrorism so much as it was mugging an old codger hobbling down a dark alley on his way to a VFW meeting.... He was startled out of his reverie by a steaming mug of cof- fee being placed in front of him. Dooley looked up to see Gene Parnell at his elbow. "Ready for your moment of glory, son?" he asked. Dooley forced a smile. "If you want to call it that, sure," he replied, picking up the coffee and taking a sip. "I don't think glory has much to do with it, though." And wasn't that the truth, just for once? Parnell shrugged as he sat down next to him. "You've got a point," he mused as he sipped from his own mug. "Twenty years since Ares, and people still remember Armstrong as being the first man on Mars, but nobody remembers who was the last person to climb up the ladder." He shrugged again. "Still, last NASA mission to the Moon and all that ... maybe we'll earn our own little place in the history books after it's over and done with." Was this guy living in the past or what? Dooley tried to look interested, although his mind was focused mainly upon the task he was to perform a few days from now. "I don't think I'm going to be writing any memoirs about this," he said, not entirely without irony. "I'm just your basic, run-of-the-mill hacker. The company could have sent someone else, but they picked me instcad." "Himn." Parnell looked thoughtful; he stared at Dooley over the lip of his raised coffee mug. "Well, that's not entirely true. You're the guy who believes we-or rather, your com- pany-can replace people with robots, turn everything up there over to machines. That makes you something of a his- toric figure in your own right, doesn't it?" There was the slightest hint of accusation in Parnell's voice, and Dooley couldn't ignore the hard glint in the man's eyes. He wondered how Parnell might react if he knew that the per- son he really intended to blame was now being subjected to slow torture less than thirty miles from here. "Hey, dude, don't blame me," he replied. "At least we're 56 ALLEN STEELE finding some use for that base, aren't we? If my compan hadn't bought it, nobody would have-" "Mr. Dooley?" The interruption came from a voice across the room; som NASA minion had poked his head through the door. "Righ here," Dooley shouted back. "Got a long-distance call from your sister Ruth," the younj man in the blue blazer responded. "Says she wants to speak t you before you go." He had been expecting this call. The real Paul Dooley had a sister in Austin, a fact that anyone in NASA's Astronaut Of, fice could easily ascertain from checking his file; what the didn't know was that Ruth Weinberg wasn't on speaki terms with her younger brother and wasn't likely to call even before he was about to board an orbital ferry. //I/ll take it, thanks." Dooley pushed back his chair an stood up. "Excuse me," he said to Parnell, glad to escape from their conversation. Parnell waved him off as Dooley saunt C across the room to the door. The NASA flack led him down the corridor to a small of e, where he helpfully punched a button on the phone to give hi a private extension. When the kid was gone, Dooley picked the receiver. "Hello, Ruth?" "Hi, Paul 7 " a female voice said. "It's Ruthie. " A small, ner- vous laugh. "Did you remember to pack your toothbrush?" "No, Ruth," he replied, keeping his tone light. "I don't need,~' one ... they have plenty on the Wheel." "But it might have germs.. ." "I'm sure they're wrapped in plastic." A small sigh of relief. "Well, that's good. You can't be too,' sure, and Mom always said you needed to have a clean too brush. Passwords traded and matched. If anyone was moniton this call, they would only hear a conversation between brother and his doting older sister. "How's Bert doing?" asked. Bert Weinberg was Ruth's husband, convalescing in a Ho ton hospital after a minor auto accident which had injured back. Bert Weinberg despised Paul Dooley almost more tha 0 THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 57 any ome ight oung A to had a t of- they aking I him r and from tered office, e him ked up ner- It need be too tooth- nitoring en a // he a Hous- jured his ore than his sister did, but there was no reason why anyone at NASA should know this. "Bert's doing okay," the voice responded, "but the doctors don't think he's going to be leaving any time very soon." if "I see ... "But he says to give you his best wishes ... oh, and he wants you to send him a photo of where you're going." "Does he want me to write him at the hospital?" "No," the voice said. "You can send it here ... and we'll have a nice party when you get home." "Are your neighbors going to be there?" A~ Sigh. "I'm afraid so," the voice said apologetically. /111m sorryI but I had to invite them. They insisted on coming." if "That's okay ... "But they're not bringing their kids. I told them to leave the kids at home and you'd sign an autograph for them later." "Good." Dooley smiled. "Okay, Ruthie. I'll be there. Tell everyone I miss them." "We miss you, too, baby brother. I've got a big kiss for you." "Okay," he replied. "Look, I gotta go now. Everything's fine, don't worry about a thing." "Okay ... see you when you get back." "Bye, Ruthie," he said. "See you later. Bye." Dooley hung up and took a moment to settle back in the desk chair and contemplate the conversation he'd just held with his masters. First, he had informed them that he was safely in place and that he had not been detected. That was the primary message he needed to pass them. Everything else was news from outside. There was now only one Paul Dooley. The other one was dead and the organi- zation would dispose of his body in an appropriate manner. The fact that the new Dooley was now a living ghost didn't bother him in the slightest; this had been anticipated from the moment the abduction took place. More importantly, though, he had been informed that the original Paul Dooley had told his kidnappers everything he needed to know in order to suc- cessfully complete the assignment. At a prearranged time, that information would be relayed to him. 58 ALLEN STEELE And finally, his primary contact was in place. Dooley wasn't going to the Moon alone. The organization wasn't taking any chances; there was a fail-safe option avail- able, in the event that something got fucked up in the course of the next few days. in short, everything was going according to plan. Dooley rose from the chair and strode to the door. The help- ful young man in the blue blazer was waiting just outside the office, eager to escort him back to the ready room. "Your sis- ter?" he asked as they began to stride down the hallway "Oh yeah," he replied, tucking his hands in the po&~ets of his jumpsuit. "You know family . . . just can't leave you alone." 0 tion vail- urse ielp- the - Sis- ts of you I From You Will Go to the Moon by Mae and Ira Freeman (Beginner Books, 1959) This is how you will go to the moon. Here is the rocket that will take you up into space. It is a tall, tall rocket. It is as tall as ten houses. The rocket has 3 parts. You will go way, way up to Part 1. The rocket men will take you up. They will take you up in a little car. Come on in. Come into this little room. This is where you will sit. You will sit here with the rocket men. The men will show you what to do. The men will show you where to sit. Hook on that belt, Hook it tight! Get set to go! 10 F - I - V - E 2/16/9S-0617 EST kay, that looks good . . Commander, move a little bit to the left, please ... look up a the rocket now, yeah, that's good ... no, don't look atIve, look at the rocket! ... okay, that's great, that's terrific ... And now here they were: Conestoga's flight crew, fresh o the vans which had transported them from the O&C Buildi to the Atlas launch complex, reluctantly posing for a TV cam- era below the base of the mobile launch platform. Egret an sea gulls circle the tall silver-blue shaft of the rocket, their harsh cries mocking them, and a handful of pad technicians in color-coded hard hats lean against the platform barely able to hide their amusement. Alex Bromleigh stood a few feet away, peering thr eyepiece of his Sony camcorder as he sought to orc Parnell, Lewitt, and Ryer. Only Paul Dooley had bee from the photo op; he stood nearby, nervously gazing t broad round base of the ferry rocket, while Bromleigh calle out directions. 0'ugh th hestrat n spar at "Next thing," Lewitt murmured to Parnell, "he'll want in swimsuits." He turned his head to spit on the tarmac. can't believe we're doing this." Parnell nodded. It was a waste of precious time and e one knew it, but it was one more photo-op which ip at me, h off ding zam- and their Zians iling, h the Arate pared it the ,alled Lnt us ac. "I THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 61 scheduled by the NASA Press Office for the benefit of the ATS documentary team. There would be more like this one over the next few days, though, and they would have to get used to it. He gazed off at the nearby beach, where pale morning sun- light dappled the receding tide. A ZV-8P Airgeep cruised low over the sands; a NASA security officer leaned out of its open cockpit, using a metal detector to sweep the perimeter of the launch pad for bombs. No one had forgotten the time an anti- space fanatic had damaged this same pad with four pounds of Serntex he'd managed to hide on the beach the night before a launch. The Airgeep moved out of sight behind the rocket, its twin horizontal blades disturbing a flock of gulls, and Parnell stole a glance from behind his sunglasses at Berkley Rhodes. The correspondent stood behind Bromleigh's camera, checking her notes as she prepared for the interview she would soon be doing. With her perpetual smile and young Bar- bara Walters looks, it was tempting to write her off as just another TV bimbo, yet Parnell had slowly come to realize over the past few weeks that there was much more to Rhodes than met the eye. There has always been friction between the American space program and the press, going back before Chet Aldridge had dumped a pitcher of water in Walter Cron- kite's lap on live TV. One group was committed to keeping their lips buttoned, the other to blabbing everything; little had changed in the basic nature of that relationship even after the Space Force was phased out and NASA had taken its place. To be fair, Parnell knew that not all reporters on the space beat were bottom-feeders looking for a hot scoop. He had en- countered enough good jourrialists-Jack Wilford of the Times, Ike Asimov of the Boston Globe, even good ol' Uncle Walter himself-to know that some were not there just to wait for the next Challenger disaster so they could thrust a microphone into the face of a stunned widow. But Berkley Rhodes ... Berkley Rhodes was another case entirely. Parnell had been briefed on her background when she was assigned to the mission. Rhodes had been a middle-ranked Washington correspondent for ATS until a few years ago, 62 ALLEN STEELE schlepping her notebook and tape recorder from one Senate budget hearing to the next. She might have remained in ob- scurity, at best interviewing politicians for First Edition be- fore the morning weather, were it not for a stroke of luck that turned her career around. To this day, no one knew exactly why she had received a manila envelope stuffed with photocopies of classified docu. ments, smuggled out of the Pentagon by a highly placed Air Force officer whose identity still remained a secret. It was un- derstandable that Sy Hersh of the Times and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, two of the top investigative reporters in the country, had received the same information ... bu why Rhodes instead of network power-hitters like Rather or Donaldson? There were persistent rumors that she might have slept with the mysterious Colonel X, but nothing had eveT been PTOVCn. Maybe Colonel X had pulled heT name out of a hat. Perhaps he liked the way she had tough-talked Jesse Helms during an interview three days before. In the end, it was pointless to speculate on why Berkley Rhodes was one of the first reporters to break the Teal Falcon story, the scandal that had not only swept Bob Dole out of the White House, but also caused Tranquillity Base to be prema- turely shut down and damaged NASA's credibility. Whatever the reason, her reputation had skyrocketed just as quickly as the agency's had plummeted, until it could now be safely ar- gued that more people recognized her face than they did any of the Conestoga's astronauts. Which was the reason why, when she had aske demanded, really-to cover NASA's final mission to the Moon for a network documentary about the demise of the U.S. space program, the agency had all too willingly agreed, "Gene ... hey, Gene, stop looking that way! Look at the rocket, the rocket . . ." Turning around to gaze up at Constellation once more, Par- nell recalled his meeting with NASA's Chief Administrator, a few months ago. It was a warm day in early autumn; from tle window of his office in the NASA headquarters building they watched as protesters marched in circles in front of the Na. tional Air and Space Museum. We're on the ropes, Gene, Dan ed a ocu- Air s un- ard rters . but er or ight g had e out Jesse rkley alcon .of the rema- atever kly as ely ar- id any sked- to the of the greed. at the ore, Par trator, a from the ing they the Na ene, Dan THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 63 Goldin had said, his hands clasped behind his back. Tranquil- lity's being sold to the Germans, and Congress is threatening to do the same with the Wheel. The deficit, the latest budget cutback ... you know the story. Unless we can get the public back on our side, the program's dead and gone by the end of the decade. That's half the reason why we want you to go up. You're the last of the old guard, you were out of the loop dur- ing the Desert Storm thing, and ... look, I know it's P.R. bullshit, but it's all we've got going for us right now. What do you say, Commander? Of course, he had said yes ... although for reasons of his 6wn. T-minus thirty-five minutes and counting. The stentorian voice of the Launch Control talker came over the pad's loud- speakers, interrupting Parnell's train of thought. We are on hot countdown, observing maximum pad discipline. The pad rats who had been watching the astronauts turned away from the railing, heading to their last-minute jobs. It took more than three thousand men and women to get an Atlas-C off the ground, and it didn't help matters much when the passengers were loafing around instead of boarding the rocket. "Okay, let's break this up," Parnell said, clapping his hands for attention. "Ms. Rhodes, let's get this done ... we're on a schedule here." Rhodes looked miffed; her cameraman had just spent five minutes grabbing stock-shots, and the best thing he had got- ten was Lewitt spitting on the ground. She strode past Brom- leigh to stand beside Parnell and fussed with her windblown hair for a moment before she signaled Bromleigh to resume filming. "Captain Parnell," she began, "this is your first trip back to the Moon in more than twenty years. How do you-?" "It feels great," he answered shortly. She waited for him to elaborate. When he didn't, she glanced at her notes. "You're flying with a team who are much younger than you. How-?" "It feels great." Again, Rhodes waited for details which were not forthcom- ing. Parnell could hear Lewitt, out of camera range, snickering 64 ALLEN STEELE under his breath. He didn't look around, but from the co of his eye he could see Cris Ryer staring off at the marsh surrounding the pad, apparently indifferent to everythi going on behind her. Parnell was beginning to wonder if s should be on this mission at all; her problems were obviou getting the best of her. The bit with the key ... "So, Captain Parnell, which do you like better?" Rho asked, sotto voce. "Sexual intercourse with donkeys horses? " He looked her straight in the eye. "It feels great," he repli "How about you?" Lewitt broke up laughing; even Bromleigh began to chuc from behind the lens. Rhodes turned several shades of r "You better be glad this isn't live," she murmured as she lo ered the mike. "Ma'am, this is a live countdown, and we've wasted enou time as it is." Parnell knelt to pick up his notebook where had placed it on the ground. "So let's cut the crap already," added softly. "We've got a job to do here, and despite rum to the contrary, this isn't a press junket for your benefit." Bromleigh unjacked the microphone and let the male e drop to the ground before he quietly walked away, leavi Rhodes and Parnell alone for a moment. "I understand you' been told to cooperate with the press," Rhodes said as s began to coil the mike cable. "At this rate, I'll be having a f words with your boss before this is wrapped up." "Fine with me," Parnell said. "But get it straight, ma'am. I'm in charge of this mission, not you, and I don't give a ra ass what Goldin thinks. In fact, I could throw you and y producer off this flight right now, and you can catch a back to the press mound and cover the launch from there f all I care. Your boss will be real pleased if I do that, won't h "You wouldn't dare." "Give me an excuse ... please." When Rhodes didn't spond, he went on. "Like I said, these people have a job to and you're getting in their way. Keep this up and I'll leave y behind. It's your call." As if on cue, the launch talker's voice came over the lou speakers again: T-minus thirty-two minutes and counting. Am~ THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 65 er ied. ors end ing u've s she a few In ... rat's your a ride re for t he? " It re- to do ve you e loud- ng, All unnecessary ground personnel, please evacuate the pad and proceed to safe distance. Final hold will commence in five minutes. Workmen were already beginning to trot down the metal stairs from atop the launch platform, heading for the white vans parked on the crawlerway near the base of the mound. A siren blew, echoing faintly off the metalwork of the gantry, itself long-since pulled away on its rails. Cold white fumes wafted down from the first stage, curling around the mam- moth supports of the launch cradle, pulled by enormous fans into the maw of the flame trench beneath the mobile plat- form. Parnell heard a sharp whistle from the bottom of the launch tower; a pad tech impatiently waited next to the ser- vice elevator, where Ryer, Lewitt, Bromleigh, and Dooley had already gathered. Parnell ignored the summons. "Your call, Ms. Rhodes," he repeated. "You cooperate with me, I'll cooperate with you ... but only on my terms. Got it?" For a moment, he wondered if she was actually going to call his bluff . . . and it was a bluff, for he knew that if he left her behind, the agency would send her to the Wheel aboard an- other ferry, even if that meant delaying the mission's third phase by at least a week while another Atlas-C was rolled out to the pad. The ugly truth of the matter was that NASA wanted good press so badly that it was willing to hunker down on all fours and lick the boots of the Berkley Rhodeses of the world, if only to ensure that a relative handful of middle-man- agement bureaucrats and senior officials could retain their civil-service jobs.... Which, of course, was just one of the many reasons why the space program was in such sorry shape. The agency had be- come so used to kowtowing to a fickle press, it had forgotten that its primary purpose was to launch rockets. But, just for once, Parnell wanted to put the fear of God into one of these leeches. He could see that he had succeeded when she blinked. "Got it," she finally whispered. "I understand." Parnell nodded. "Good. Then let's go ... we've got a launch window to meet." He turned and led her toward the elevator. 66 ALLEN STEELE If the rest of the mission went so easily, he would nothing to worry about for the next ten days. The elevator creaks as it gradually rises through the to-v central shaft. No one in the cage says anything during the ascent; through its wire-mesh walls, they can see the flat I scape of Merritt Island spread out before them, the giant w cube of the Vehicle Assembly Building dominating the nery from three miles away, the Florida mainland a green across the distant western horizon. Constellation's sleek fuselage looms next to the lau tower. They rise past the vast wings of the first-stage boo! past the ropy coils of fuel cables, past the gently tapering ond stage, where a thin skein of frozen condensation from supercooled fuels within the rocket's fuel tanks has A itself to the hull like hoarfrost, until they reach the t0i the tower. T hey catch a brief glimpse of the orbiter's vert stabilizer before it vanishes behind its sharp delta wing the elevator slows and comes to a clanking halt. A technician in a white jumpsuit and helmet opens the c door and leads them across the open platform to the crew cess arm. A chill morning breeze, tinged, with salt, mo, through the skeletal girders and sings past the wires of emergency cable car leading from the tower to the ground below; their last view of Earth is from this aerie above i marshy coast, so near and yet so far. Parnell is the first person to walk onto the access arm. feels a gentle vibration through the soles of his shoes as strides down the enclosed bridge, a tactile sense of restraip ' power that trembles against his palms as he touches the hat rails. Constellation is a monster beginning to awaken from slumber. At the end of the access arm is the whiteroom. Here, the is no wind, no salt air, no sound, only a small sterile charnb nestled up against the rocket's fuselage. One technician hav, Parnell his helmet, helps him fit it over his head and atta(i the dangling line to the communications carrier on his w i Another technician guides him to an open circular hatchl age ac- ans the d far the . He s he ained and- rn its there inber hands attach waist. h THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 67 gives him the customary backslap as he climbs into the belly of the beast. Parnell climbs up a narrow ladder past rows of swivel- mounted acceleration couches until he reaches the top of the passenger compartment. He clambers into his couch on the starboard side and begins to fasten the lap- and shoulder-har- nesses around his body. Through the open hatch above him he can see the narrow confines of the cockpit; Kingsolver and Trombly, the pilot and co-pilot, glance briefly over their shoulders as they continue running through the pre-launch checklist, repeating each item as they gaze at the myriad dials and digital indicators on their wraparound consoles, their gloved hands snapping toggles and depressing buttons. "Primary BFS check. . . " "BFS transferred, check. GPC on Mode Five, green light." "Control, GPC and BFS checks complete, over." "Select three-plus-one on screen three." "Roger that. . . " Sunlight lances down, as if through a narrow skylight, from the cockpit windows. Below him, Parnell can hear the rest of his crew as they climb the ladder into the cockpit. A few moments later, Cris Ryer hoists herself into the couch on the port side of the vessel, just across the aisle from him. He can barely make out her face inside the open visor of her helmet, yet she looks pensive as she snaps the worn buckles of her harness and tightens the webbed straps. "Remember to extinguish all smoking materials," he says. "Right," she murmurs. The joke was old and tired before she was out of diapers, and she pays no attention to it. "I sort of meant the look in your eyes," he adds. Ryer casts him a look which somehow manages to be both hot and cold at the same time, yet she doesn't say anything. "If there's something you want to discuss . . ." he continues. "No, Commander, there isn't," she says, looking away again. "In fact, I'd just as soon not talk about anything right now, thank you." The ferry pilots have paused in their metronomic recitation of the checklist. Although neither of them are looking their t, 68 ALLEN STEELE way, it's obvious that they're eavesdropping on the convers tion. After a moment, they resume their work. "Go for OMS pressurization." "Third stage OMS pressurization beginning. Switch armed, check . . . " "We'll talk about it later," Parnell says. He hesitates, the adds, "And we will have a discussion, Captain." Ryer's expression is glacial. "Yes, sir, Commander." Parnell sighs and shuts his eyes for a moment. He fcels headache coming on; whose swell idea was it to allow worn aboard spaceships in the first place, for Christ's sake? gropes through his jumpsuit pockets for the Tylenol stashe in there somewhere as his eyes land on the digital chronome ter above the cockpit hatch. T-minus eighteen minutes, thirty-four seconds, and count ing. They've come off the obligatory nine-minute hold in t countdown; unless the boys in the firing room find a reaso to call another hold or even abort the launch, they'll be o their way in less than twenty minutes. That's eighteen and half minutes too long for him. "Mission, this is Constellation, conducting voice chec over ... voice check, one, two, three." "Load OPS-1 flight plan." "Loading OPS-1, roger.' ERR log switch set to reset. En Spec nine-niner, check on screens one and two." "Roger that, Mission, we copy. Voice check over. Const tion out." He finds the Tylenol tin, opens it, pulls out two tablets, pops them into the back of his mouth, tasting their blandn on his tongue for a moment before he swallows them witho the benefit of water. From somewhere behind and benea him, he can hear muted conversation as one of the w techs struggles to help Dooley into his couch. jud the strident sound of the young man's voice, he se having a last-minute panic attack, manifesting itse eral inability to fasten himself into his couch. Parnell shuts his eyes again, trying to let the painkillers their work. What did he do to deserve this? A final trip to t Moon with a hostile lesbian for a first officer and two me IP NOW- THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE ~ conversa- Switch is ,tates, then er.11 He feels a ~ow women 0 sake3 He ~nol stashed ~ chronome- and count- hold in the ind a reason hey'li be on teen and a voice check, 69 vultures and a computer geek for passengers. The only sane person in his crew is Lewitt; if it weren't for Jay, he'd be off this ancient tub already, taking the elevator to the nearest phone, where he'd call Goldin and tell him where he could shove this mission and exactly how. . "Go for MPS pressurization." "Initiating MPS cycle, roger." This ancient tub. Funny how that thought just came to him. Opening his eyes again, Parnell gazes around the narrow passenger compartment. He can remember when the first Atlas-C was delivered by ocean barge from the North Ameri- can Rockwell plant in Palmdale, California: brand-new, high- tech, seemingly the last word in astronautical engineering. Now, looking at it with fresh eyes, Constellation's interior looks as antique as that of a B-52 bomber. The multipaned Plexiglas of the portal next to him is friction-scarred, the view of the blue sky overhead dimmed with age. The riveted seams of the beige-painted steel show the first signs of rust; the fab- ric of the acceleration couch is shiny with age, with a comer of his seat beginning to fray, white tufts of lining peeking out from between the stretched threads. There's a small square patch almost directly above his head, not old but not very re- cent either, where a nameless hangar worker once replaced a section that had suffered metal fatigue, and the bolt-holes around the service panels below the ladder are scratched and eroded from hundreds of business meetings with torqueless Parnell feels a cold shiver run down his spine. He remem- bers what he told Judith just last night, that Constellation is a reliable old bird. Now he's not quite so certain. The seats of the first Atlas-A orbiters had been equipped with evacuation capsules, much like enclosed ejection seats; if there was an emergency during launch, in theory the passengers could hit a couple of switches that would close the capsules and jettison them from the craft. But there were so many problems with the capsules-including a misfire that had killed a crewman- that they were removed from the ferries. No one talks about it, but the Atlas-Cs are flying coffins during the first three minutes of flight. If something goes dur- ) reset. Enter I ~r. Constella- ~o tablets, and wir blandness them without I and beneath ,he whiteroom. judging from ae seems to be ,g itself as gen- ~ painkillers do final trip to the and two media 70 ALLEN STEELE ing launch, the only possible recourse is for the pilot to the third-stage rocket and attempt an abort-to-ground landi At least, that was the theory; he'd hate to be aboard the f spacecraft to actually attempt such a high-speed maneuver "Ground crew signals secure and all clear." "Roger. Go for lock-down of main hatch..." He hears the sound of the belly hatch slamming shut. Tro bly unbuckles himself from his couch and quickly clin down the ladder to dog it tight from the inside. Although can't see the access arm from his porthole because of the s board wing, Parnell knows that the bridge must be swing away from the hull. The pad should be vacant now, save f handful of technicians double-timing it to a waiting cabin lights flicker for a moment, a clue that Constella has switched to internal power. Placing his palms on the armrests, Parnell can feel the bration of the ferry's fuel tanks pressurizing to maximum pacity. He doesn't have to look at the chronometer to kn that the stately minuet of clocks and computers is enteri its final movement. "Abort advisory check satisfactory." "Check, AAC is satisfactory. Channel two is clear." "Roger, Launch Control, channel two is clear. Cabin pr surization is nominal, proceeding with hydraulic presst check. . ." And so it goes, on down the checklist, until in the fi sixty seconds of countdown, somewhere between the clos of the first-stage vents and auxiliary power unit shutdo Parnell finds himself murmuring a prayer under his breat He has never considered himself a particularly religious m especially not when it comes to leaving the ground. A b a bird, regardless of whether it's his Beechcraft or a three-st rocket, and intellectually he knows that his fate rests more the eyes, ears, and hands of the distant launch contr 11 the thousands of people who prepped Constellatio than those of a mythic deity whose very existence ways doubted. God doesn't work for NASA, he tells himself. Yet, when casts a stray glance in Ryer's direction, he's vaguely surprise AW nal ure n, th. an, d is age e in and ight s al- n he ised THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 71 to see that her own mouth is moving silently, and he doesn't have to be a lip-reader to know what she's saying: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ... "Roger, Launch Control, we've got APU green-for-go, over." "Main engine gimbal complete, all systems configured for launch." "Roger that . . Then Ryer's eyes move in his direction, and when she finds him looking at her, the words stop as her face blanches. Before she can look away again, though, Parnell smiles and gives her a sly wink as he silently completes the verse: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven... She reluctantly returns the smile. "Main engine start on three." "Five ... "Four.. . The countdown reaches T-minus three seconds, and five thousand two hundred and fifty tons of hydrazine and nitric acid ignite beneath them in a deafening roar which shakes the vessel as if an earthquake had erupted directly beneath the pad. For an instant, the ferry sways back and forth within its cradle as the monster struggles against the invisible bars of its prison. "Main engine start." 'Two ... "One ... And then the countdown reaches zero, the cradle opens wide, and Constellation slowly begins to rise. Editorial from The Manchester Union-Leader, Manchester, New Hampshire, August 28, / 968 A "Lunatic" Idea If one needs any further reason to question the fitness of Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, it's his campaign promise to dismantle the U.S. Space Force and replace it with a civilian space agency. During a campaign speech delivered last Wednesday at the McDonnell Douglas Corporation's manufacturing facility in St. Louis, Senator Ken- nedy told aerospace workers that as President of the United States he would phase out the USSF, and in its place, substitute a new Federal space organization which would concentrate on "peaceful and scientific" uses of outer space instead of "strictly military goals." Unfortunately, Little Bobby the Boy Senator has considerable support for his proposal from the liberals in Congress, who have begun to ques- tion the Pentagon's oft-stated intent to use the Moon as a base for scien- tific research as well as in the pursuit of national security. It should also be noted that Little Bobby's cohorts in the so-called Youth International Party have seconded the notion. "If we can go to the Moon for some other reason than making war," says ]err,/ Rubin, "then that's fine with me, Of course Red Jerry would agree! He and his gang of hippie radicals have already made headlines by protesting at the front gates of Cape Canaveral, including the "sit-ins" which have prevented military personnel from reporting to duty. If Kennedy got his way, he would probably ap- point Abbie Hoffmann to be the director of the space progr-am. That way they could have a "love-in" with "Hanoi Jane" Fonda on the Moon! hat the Senator and his de focto Communist friends don't mention is that this idea has been floated already, In 1959, Little Bobby's older brother, Little Johnny, proposed much the same thing with his Space Act, which was supported by Little Johnny's former Democratic running mate, Senator Lyndon B. "Claim-jumpin'" Johnson of Texas. This was only one of the reasons why the Kennedy/Johnson ticket was soundly defeated in the 1960 presidential election; the American people recognized the fact that we need a strong military presence in space in order to offset the intemational Communist conspiracy. Now, eight years later, we've got old whine poured into new bottles. lip 74 ALLEN STEELE It's clear that Little Bobby wants to vindicate Little Johnny's political r( tation, although Boston's mayor could care less since he's busy clestro the city's schools with his desegregation program. It doesn't seerT matter to Senator Kennedy and his running mate, Senator Eugene 'T head" McCarthy, that the very reason why America has Space Stat One in the first place, and will be sending the first reconnaissance miss to the Moon next December, is its commitment to preserving the id of liberty and freedom. During this past decade, President Nixon has held the public trust insisting upon a military space program. Conducting scientific research the Moon is a great idea, but a civilian space agency cannot possibly ft the objectives of the U.S. Space Force. As a ranking member of Senate Armed Forces Committee, Little Bobby must know this ... wh makes us question why he would propose something as ludicrous a civilian space program. Could it be that Senator Kennedy's fellow travelers have received inst tions from the Kremlin to stop Project Luna? -Williarn F. Loeb, editor and publish Aff-AL 'U_ ng to "t- on ~on ~als ~er STX 2116/95 - 1232 GMT onstellation left Earth atop a dense column of fire, the twenty-nine motors in its first-stage booster consuming more than a thousand tons of liquid pro- pellant in less than ninety seconds. The rocket's ascent could be seen from hundreds of miles away. On Florida's Gulf Coast, the vessel was a tapering con- trail rising at a sharp angle from the eastern horizon, while on Cocoa Beach the sand itself seemed to vibrate as early-morn- ing beachcombers paused in collecting shells to watch as the enormous rocket ripped upward into the deep blue sky. Within a minute and a half, Constellation had climbed almost twenty-five miles into the sky and was a little more than thirty-one miles downrange from the Cape. Traveling 5,256 miles per hour, it left in its wake a sonic boom that rattled the windows of houses far behind. At this point, the pilots throttled the engines back to 70 percent. Constellation began to gradually fall, its nose dipping slightly toward the horizon. Left on its own, the rocket would have continued its shallow dive until it finally crashed at hy- personic speed into the Atlantic Ocean, but the throttle-back was only the prelude to its primary staging maneuver. The first-stage engines expired, its fuel tanks drained, and a couple of moments later explosive bolts at the juncture of the 76 ALLEN STEELE first and second stages ignited. The winged booster cleaN away from the second stage; as it began to fall toward t ocean, a ring-shaped parafoil made of whisker-fine mesh st, blossomed out from beneath the wings, braking its desc( until it splashed-down in the Atlantic nearly two hundi miles from the Cape, where it would be recovered by a NA freighter and towed back to Merritt island. Long before this occurred, though, eight engines in the s ond stage fired at full-throttle as 155 tons of fuel kicked G stellation farther into the upper atmosphere. For two m, minutes, the ferry fought its way up the gravity well, peneti ing the topmost regions of the atmosphere until, at an altiti of nearly forty miles and more than 330 miles downrange, second stage was jettisoned, whereupon it followed its m on a parafoiled glide into the drink. By now Constellation had lost most of its take-off mass; was accelerating at more than fourteen thousand miles hour. Behind the orbiter's delta wings and vertical stabili! its single engine throttled up as the spacecraft accelerate( nearly 18,500 miles per hour ... until, sixty-three miles ab the Atlantic and a little more than seven hundred miles do, range from the Cape, the third-stage engine shut down the winged craft coasted into low orbit. Within the ferry, everyone took a deep breath. Parnell thought he still remembered what it was like to a fireball into the heavens; as he raised a trembling ban, lift the visor of his helmet, though, he realized that his rn ory wasn't quite as sharp as he'd once believed. If there ) four minutes in anyone's life that were as terrifying or t matic as being inside an Atlas-C during launch, then it ha be birth itself ... and nobody remembers what that's like "Jesus," he murmured as he stuck his fingers inside his met's foam padding to wipe away the sweat. "I'm too ol( this crap." He shifted his buttocks against the upholstery of his co only to discover that his ass barely rested against the Indeed, it felt as if he were now floating a half -inch abov( couch, restrained only by his harness. There was a momei disorientation until he realized what had happened. aved the steel ~cent Ldred SA ss and es per )ilizer, ited to ~ above Aown- ~n and ~ to ride iand to s rnern- re we're or trau- t had to like. his hel- old for s couch, the seat. bove the :)nient of THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 77 Weightlessness. Free-fall. There was a low, mechanical groan as the acceleration cou- ches cantilevered in vertical position; what had once been walls were now floors. He turned his head to the right, ignor- ing the painful crick in his neck as he peered around the edge of his helmet through the porthole next to his seat. For a few moments, he could see nothing but starless, pitch-black noth- ingness, as fathomless as the deepest abyss imaginable.... Then the pilots ignited RCR's along the fuselage to roll the ferry over on its back, and Earth hove in view, upside-down and as vast as the eye could see. Bright sunlight sparkled across the surface of the South Atlantic, filtering through sparse white clouds which cast shadows upon the ocean. Par- nell caught a glimpse of a tiny silver shape dragging faint wake-lines behind it, and then the ship-probably an oil tanker the size of a small island-was gone from sight, re- placed now by the mottled brown edge of a giant landmass which, after a moment, he recognized as Africa's northwest coast. A low chuckle began to rise in Parnell's throat as he felt tears stinging the comers of his eyes. It had been so long, so He was in space again. Not everyone aboard the ferry had done well during launch; someone always gets spacesick during a passenger flight. in this instance, it was Paul Dooley and Alex Bromleigh who came down with motion sickness, despite the Dramamine tablets they had taken before boarding the rocket. Berkley Rhodes had managed to keep her breakfast down, although apparently only by sheer force of will; she lay in her couch, her eyes tightly closed, not daring to look out the window. While Constellation circled Earth in preparation for the periapsis burn which would boost the ferry into higher orbit, lay Lewitt unbuckled himself and floated aft to tend to the ill passengers. Fortunately, both men had found the vomit bags tucked under their seats and had remembered to use them, so there were no free-falling messes that had to be cleaned up. j1p 78 ALLEN STEELE Parnell remained in his seat while the ferry completed first orbit, contenting himself with the view from his windo He watched Africa pass beneath him until it disappeared neath a dense cloud bank which extended as far as Madag car; then the ferry crossed the nightside terminator above t Indian Ocean. Australia appeared as a cluster of city lights s rounding Perth and brief flashes from a thunderstorm over t outback; the coast of New Guinea was outlined by the har glow of Port Moresby. "You can never get tired of it, can you?" Cris Ryer said. He looked across the aisle at her. She was still strapped i her couch on the port side, gazing down at the sparse const lation marking the Bismarck Archipelago. It was the first ti she had spoken since they left the Cape. "I once thought I was," he said, and she looked querulo at him. "Tired of the view, I mean," he added. "Do a cou of tours of duty on the Wheel and pretty soon you get tired everything. " Ryer smiled a little as she shook her head. Like Parnell, s had removed her helmet; her fine blond hair had risen fro her scalp until it surrounded her head like a halo. "Not m she said, brushing the hair back from her face. "I never tired of watching. Whenever I had a chance, I spent it in fr of a porthole ... just looking." He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you were station the Wheel. When was this?" "I wasn't on the Wheel," she replied, looking out her wi dow. "After I joined NASA, I did a three-month tour abo the Mole. That was back in 'eighty-two, before I transferre the Lunar Support Team." " You were on the Mole? I'm impressed. What did you there? " I The Mole was the nickname for Space Station Two, cially known as the U.S. Air Force Manned Orbital Lab tory. One of the last holdovers from the Space Force, h' had been established during the mid-sixties in polar o&tl' miles above Earth. A small zero-g station-essentially are fitted upper stage of an old Atlas-B ferry-Space Station' had served as a military reconnaissance platform, keeping t :s V. le X_ ie or ,he )m ,ot )nt on in ard I to do A fi- [)Ta- LOL 160 tro- Fwo THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 79 on the old Soviet Union until the early eighties, when unman- ned spy satellites had finally rendered it obsolete. Since the station had been capable of supporting only a handful of people at any one time, there weren't too many NASA astronauts who could claim that they had spent time aboard the Mole. Most of the vets had retired from active duty, while others had taken jobs at the CIA, the National Security Agency, or the National Reconnaissance Office. Even the Mole itself was gone; a sustained period of solar activity had expanded Earth's upper atmosphere, in turn causing the sta- tion's orbit to deteriorate. By then, NASA had neither the funds nor the inclination to rescue the tiny station, and when it had plummeted to a fiery death over Antarctica in 1983, only Greenpeace had objected on grounds of the environmen- tal hazard it posed. Ryer glowered at him. "If I told you what I did there, Com- mander," she said with mock severity, "I'd have to kill you." "Great. . ." "I was a shuttle driver, that's all. I took spooks up from Vandenberg and I took them back down when they were through. Pretty boring work, all things considered." "You passed over Russia several times a day. That counts for something." 1f you say so." She shrugged. "Now and then one of the spooks would let me check out the scope so I could get a good eyeful of Baikonur ... enough to know that they were screw- ing up their space program only slightly worse than we were screwing up ours. Nobody aboard the Mole was taking the Russians very seriously anymore, despite all the 'evil empire' stuff coming out of Washington." Ryer peered out her window again at the dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean. "So when the Pentagon announced that it was shutting down the Mole, I skipped over to the LST and became a moonship driver. Thought that would give me some ~ob security and all that... Her voice trailed off. "Great idea, huh?" she murmured. "Sometimes I'm so smart I amaze myself." Somebody wasn't being smart, Parnell thought, that was for damn sure. If she had served on the Mole. even qq q ~,;bnttle I I 80 ALLEN STEEL jockey, she must have had CIA clearance ... and if she ever posed a meaningful risk to national security, then would have passed Top Secret info to the Russians long be now. The fact that Ryer was still on active duty more th~ decade after the MOL phase-out was enough to demonst her loyalty. Then why was she being drummed out of the NASA a,.; naut corps? Was it simply because she had been discov( carrying on a sexual relationship with another woman? was there another reason he didn't know about? Stretching against his harness, Parnell leaned across armrest. "Look, Cris," he said quietly, "about the thing v the keys . . ." "I don't want to talk about it." Ryer gazed out her portl again. "I've probably said too much already. No offense, Q mander, but just leave me alone, okay?" He was about to prod her when sunlight lanced through windows. Constellation was coming up on the daylight ter nator; looking through the window, he saw the sun ris above Baja California, describing a hazy blue line t stretched from San Diego to Mexico City. "Okay, look sharp back there," Trombly called out from cockpit. "We're coming up on periapsis burn, so every( buckle in. We'll be firing at T-minus five." Parnell heard a soft groan from someone behind hin Dooley perhaps, or maybe Bromleigh-as Lewitt pulled hi self along the ladder until he reached his seat. There was need to tighten his own harness, since the burn would I only a couple of minutes and would be nowhere near as v lent as the staging maneuvers during launch. He made cert, that his helmet was safely stowed beneath his couch, tb watched through his porthole as the American West Coa seen through a swirl of clouds, slowly glided into view. As much as he wanted to ignore it, though, sometw, about Ryer gnawed at Parnell's guts. He knew that , wouldn't be satisfied until he discovered exactly what it wg had she ef ore an a trate stro- vered ? Or s the with thole Com- gh the termi- rising e that om the eryone him- d him- was no uld last as vio- certain , then t Coast, mething that he t it was. THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 81 The periapsis bum occurred as Constellation passed over the Gulf of Mexico. At the end of a brief countdown from the cockpit, the main engine fired and the ferry surged forward, the blue horizon rushing away beneath the vessel as it was kicked into a Hohmann transfer that would carry the orbiter on an elliptical trajectory into higher orbit. When the burn ended, Parnell unbuckled his harness and floated out of his couch. He bent and straightened his legs to relieve the cramps he'd been feeling for the last few minutes, then grasped the ladder-which now seemed to lie horizon- tally along the floor-and pulled himself forward to -the cockpit. "Permission to come up, Captain?" he asked as he stuck his head and shoulders through the hatch. "Hmm?" Captain Kingsolver glanced over his shoulder. "Oh ... permission granted, Commander." He reattached his clipboard and pen to the console between the seats, then turned around. "Thanks for asking," he added. "Some of the VIPs we carry up don't give us the courtesy." "Not that there's all that much room." Trombly sucked a tube of orange juice as he watched the autopilot display. For at least a little while, Constellation was able to fly herself, guided by the navigation computers and the laws of inertia as it glided toward its rendezvous with the Wheel. "You're welcome to make yourself at home, though, if you can, sir." "I'll try, Commander ... and you can call me Gene, by the way." There was very little room in the cockpit, but Parnell was able to squeeze himself into a space between the seat backs and the aft bulkhead. "Nice launch you guys pulled off." "Thanks. We do our best." Kingsolver stolidly nodded his head, acknowledging the professional compliment. "Of course, it wasn't anything special to an old-timer like your- self. Probably like riding in a commuter jet." If only he knew. The cockpit layout was much the same as Parnell remembered it, except that some of the analog dials had been replaced by digital instrumentation. Japanese-made, of course, he noted with some dismay, but wasn't everything 82 ALLEN STEELE these days? He noticed also that the toggle switches and c( puter keyboards were shiny with overuse, and the bro leather grips of the control yokes had been repaired with bl friction tape. In the old days, worn-out equipment would h been long-since replaced, but there were precious few sp parts left in the NASA inventory. Budget cuts, as alway although it was debatable whether the aerospace manufac ers who had built the originals still stocked them in t warehouses. Kingsolver seemed to read Parnell's mind. "She's a to old bird," he said, giving the yoke a fond pat, "but she gets where we want to go. Even if we're down to cannibaliz Intrepid for odds and ends every now and then." "I heard," Parnell said. "I flew Intrepid on her shakedo mission. She was a brand new ship back then." He ca the apologetic look on Kingsolver's face and shook his h( "Don't worry about it, skipper. I was one of the guys signed the papers to take her off the flight line. Broke heart, but it had to be done." An uncomfortable silence descended upon the cockpit, ken afteT a moment by tinny voices coming through Ti bly's headset. The co-pilot listened for a few moments, t reached up to click the KU-band transceiver. "Ah, we c that, Wheel. Constellation at angles nine-three-six, r three-five-zero. We're in the grid and preparing for 01 b Over." Through the angular panes of the canopy, Parnell could the broad, blue-green curve of Earth sweeping back into vi shining against the matte-black darkness of space. The f was flattening out its trajectory as it began to enter wheel's orbit. in another few minutes, the pilots would ta the controls off auto and fire the main engine one more ti to match its heading with Space Station One. Holding onto the seat backs, Parnell carefully edged hims a little farther into the cockpit until he was able to crane neck and look straight up through the ceiling window He tened to Kingsolver and Trombly as they traded che .cilis 't structions and spoke with the Wheel's traffic controller, A THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 83 and com- captain's fingers tapping softly upon the keyboard as he en- e brown tered instructions into the orbiter's main computer. ith black Then he spotted it: a tiny white oval, rotating clockwise on uld have its ams, drifting slowly into view. Looking like an old-style ew spare bicycle tire someone had left in the sky, just the way he had always- last seen it many years ago. He found himself grinning at the ufactur- sight. Jesus, it was beautiful in their "Commander? Gene?" Kingsolver's voice was apologetic as he interrupted Parnell's thoughts. "We're coming up on 01 a tough burn, sir. I'm going to have to ask you to return to your seat. e gets us Sorry." ibalizing Parnell forced himself away from the windows. "That's okay, skipper. I understand." There would be just enough kedown g-force during the orbital insertion burn to throw unsecured c caught items around the cockpit, and that included a visiting passen- is head. ger. "Thanks for letting me come up front. I appreciate it." ys who He was beginning to backpedal out of the cockpit when roke my Trombly suddenly reached up to tap the back of his hand. "Hey, Commander," he said quickly, "there's one more thing pit, bro- you might want to see. Check out my window at ten o'clock." h Trom- Parnell grabbed bulkhead rungs to brake himself, then ts, then gently pulled himself back into the cabin until his head and shoulders were next to the co-pilot's. For a moment, he saw we copy nothing except the limb of the earth then a new object, x, range until now invisible except to the ship's radar, coasted into I burn. view. ould see it was another spacecraft, matching course with the ferry as it headed for rendezvous with the Wheel. to view, Almost the same size as Constellation, the spaceplane was he ferry a sleek, elongated bullet with narrow, wedge-shaped wings at ter the its aft end that tilted upward above its blunt stem. The lower uld take fuselage was perfectly flat, its landing gear bays invisible ore time within the reentry tiles which comprised most of the vessel's outer skin. There were no portholes to be seen except a couple himself of windows near the front of its tapering bow. rane his The ESA space shuttle Domberger resembled the Constel- . He lis- lation about as much as a Concorde SST looks like a Douglas klist in- DC-3. The Horus-class orbiter had ridden into space on the Her, the back of a manned Sanger booster, which in turn had lifted 84 ALLEN STEELE from a runway in French Guiana ... more than half an ho after Constellation had been launched from Cape Canavera if Parnell correctly remembered the mission schedule. Eve now, as Constellation's boosters were still being recovere from the Atlantic Ocean, the Sanger was probably touchir down for landing on the same airstrip it had left barely a hour ago, its scramjets ready for refueling in a fraction of tf time that it would take Constellation to be remated with i boosters, patched up one more time, and hauled out to the p for its next mission. "The hare and the tortoise," Parnell murmured as h watched the Domberger glide past them. "Pardon?" Kingsolver said. The pilot didn't look away fro his controls, but Parnell noticed how tightly he clutched th control yoke. "You heard what I said, Captain." He pushed off from th seat backs without another word and exited the cockpi clumsily making his way down the center aisle to his seat. Everyone was watching the German shuttle through th portholes; as Parnell floundered into his seat, he noticed ths Bromleigh had recovered from spacesickness enough to hois his camera and grab a shot of the Dornberger. Maybe tha would impress the folks back home when they saw it on th evening news. On the other hand, they'd probably just click over to a re of Who's the Boss? a M 'Our eral, Even rered ~hing ,y an if the th its e pad is he frorn ,d the m the ickpit, --at. ,,h the ~d that ) hoist ie that on the a rerun From The New York Times; July 21, / 969 MEN LAND ON MOON 10 ASTRONAUTS AVOID CRATER, SET CRAFT ON A ROCKY PLAIN By John Noble Wilford (Specia/ to The New York Times) HOUSTON, July 20-Men landed on the moon today. Ten Ameri- cans, astronauts of Luna One, rode their giant spacecr-aft safely and smoothly to a historic landing at 4:17:40 P.m., Eastern daylight time. Major John Harper Wilson, the 38-year-old United States Space Force expedition commander, radioed to Earth and the control room here: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. Eagle One has landed." ag One is the code-name of the I 60-foot space vessel that carried Wilson and his colleagues from Space Station One to their landing site on a level, rock-strewn plain near the southwestern shore of the and Sea of Tranquillity, It was soon followed by the successful touchdowns of Eagle Two and Eagle Three, two unmanned yet nearly identical car-go vessels. The astronauts reported a bleak, gr-ay landscape covered with rocks and boulders of varying sizes, with the sun hanging low over the eastern horizon and small craters filled with shadows. Their landing was witnessed by an audience estimated to be in the millions, who watched live television transmissions sent from Eagle One as it made its final descent. Shortly after a successful landing was con- firmed by Mission Control, President Robert F. Kennedy offered his con- gratulations to Wilson and his crew by telephone from the White House. "This is a great day for the entire human race, and your country is very proud of you," President Kennedy said. "God bless you." '4 ~-E-V-E-N r 211619S-1317 GMT een from a distance, Wheel looked much the same as when Parnell last visited twenty years before, yet as Constellation closed in on the st tion, the illusion of permanency slowly evaporated until was faced with undeniable truth. The space station was falling apart. The Wheel was composed of twenty sections each structed of flexible fabric and nylon which had been t ported into orbit in collapsed sections. Once the sections linked together and the 250-foot torus was pressurized like enormous inner tube, an outer hull of sheet aluminum h been built around the fabric and nylon inner wall to serve as meteor bumper. Internal water tanks arranged evenly betwe the hulls served not only as internal stabilizers but also passive radiation shields; after the interior compartments h been completed, small rocket engines along the outer hull h Jy t been fired to rotate the station clockwise at neaj, rpm's, producing one-third Earth gravity within the torus. Parnell remembered the station when it was still new. Bac then, it was the epitome of American know-how, a symbol his country's military and technological superiority. But had been a generation ago, and things had changed. The meteor bumper was now a patchwork of replace THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 87 I , the ited it ic sta- [til he i con- trans- s were ike an -n had ve as a tween dso as ts had ill had three as. ,. Back ibol of it that placed t A plates, the older ones rendered off-white by long-term radia- tion exposure, the newer plates scarred and pockmarked by micrometcorite impacts. The silver Mylar insulation protect- ing the electrical conduits that ran alongside the two hub spokes was torn and frayed in places; likewise, the oxygen and auxiliary water tanks on the bulb-shaped hub looked as if they had been repaired many times. The troughlike mercury boiler which ran along the top of the torus had been nonfunctional ever since the nuclear generator was installed at the hub's north turret sixteen years ago; the edges of the boiler itself were battered, and one section was missing entirely. The big high-g in antenna at the hub's south turret had a small hole in the dish; some of the portholes along the torus were perma- nently scaled from the outside. Overall, the Wheel resembled an old battleship rusting in port. Its decrepitude wasn't so much the result of thirty-one years of hard service as it was of benign neglect. Space Station One had become an unwanted derelict, a giant symbol of a frontier that had been conquered, then abandoned. Keeping it operational was only slightly less costly than dismantling it altogether. Through the cockpit hatch, Parnell could hear the pilots murmuring to each other as they eased Constellation into a parking orbit a half-mile from the station. Watching through his porthole, he could see the Dornberger as it closed upon the station's hub. Motors rotated the south turret counter- clockwise to produce a stable target at the docking bays, but unlike Constellation, the German shuttle was equipped with a universal docking adaptor which enabled it to link up di- rectly with the Wheel. Constellation, on the other hand, would have to await the arrival of a taxi that would ferry her crew and cargo to the station. Dornberger's advantage lay in having shorter wings, and thus the ability to maneuver close to the station, although Parnell wondered if its designers didn't have a hidden agenda when they added that docking adaptor. Had the Horus shut- tles been built for the day when the Europeans would own Space Station One? ESA maintained that it intended to place its own space station in low orbit and that it had no desire to ALLEN STEELE acquire the Wheel. On the other hand, Parnell remembei when the Europeans had said nearly the same thing about tablishing their own lunar base. "Okay, folks, we're here." Kingsolver had unbuckled hi harness and was floating through the cockpit hatch into tht passenger compartment. "Main-Ops says that a taxi's on its way and should be with us in a few minutes, so y'all bette, shake a leg." He paused next to Parnell's seat. "Commander, if you'd like to give me a hand in back. . . "Sure thing, skipper." Parnell slipped out of his harness and followed the pilot toward the aft end of the compartment, Ryer and Lewitt were both taking this in stride, but two of thel',~'i civilians were having problems. Dooley was still green-faced and looked as if he was ready to blow his guts again any mo- ment, while Bromleigh was struggling to unfasten his buckles and at the same time keep his camcorder from wandering' away. Berkley Rhodes, on the other hand, was completely fasr~- nated by everything going on around her. Already unbuckl' from her couch, she floated in the center aisle ' almost somersaults as she savored her first taste of unfettered w lessness. Not much of a surprise; some people adapt to micrq- gravity faster than others, and physicians had long ago notial how women usually get over spacesickness faster than merf, Still, she should have paid closer attention to the training films; her euphoria was almost out of control, and she carnt dangerously close to kicking Kingsolver in the teeth as he tried to squeeze past her. The captain impatiently grabbed her ankles and pushed her out of the way. Rhodes cried out, more in surprise than in pain, as her shoulders banged against the ceiling. "Dammi she snapped, "just ask next time!" . "Whoa. Take it easy." Parnell grasped her forearm Al do~ eight-W' hauled her back toward her seat. "It's fun, but don't go nuts, Equal and opposite reaction, remember?" "Uh, yeah ... right." Her happy grin faded; she hadn't for. gotten their encounter on the launch pad. "Sorry, Com- mander," she said stiffly. "I'll try to remember." a th( aW and gooL Th see ti carefu The t~ .d his to the on its better inder, abered )Ut es- ,s and nent. A the f aced T Mo- ckles eying asci- ~kled ,oing 'Lght- [cro- iced aen. 'ling arne ,, he her i in it// ind its. : or- M. - THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 89 "Don't worry about it," he told her. "You've just got to be a little careful, that's all." Her expression softened a bit; for the first time, he noticed her gray-green eyes and the lovely way her long hair billowed out like a blond cloud around her head. She really was an at- tractive woman, Parnell reflected, once she turned off the hard-nosed journalist routine. On impulse, he reached over the back of Lewitt's seat and snagged the NASA flight cap from the flight engineer's head. Jay looked around and started to complain until Parnell gave him a wink. "Put this on," he said as he handed the cap to Rhodes, "and don't forget to return it to the lieutenant. Someone should have told you to wear a barrette." "Thanks, Commander." She caught her loose hair under the cap and pulled the scrambled-eggs bill over her forehead. "Sorry to be such a )erk." "There's a first time for everyone, Ms. Rhodes." Her grin returned; this time, there was a hint of sly sexual- ity to it. "Call me Berkley," she said in a low voice, clasping his shoulders. "Most guys do." Lewitt gave a low, smart-aleck whistle at this; glancing over his shoulder, Parnell caught the shit-eating grin on his face. Ryer appeared to be studying the rivets along the ceiling. "My name's Gene," he replied as he gently disengaged himself, "That's what my wife calls me." She was still giving him a 100-watt smile as he pulled him- self down the aisle. All in the name of good press relations, he told himself ... although he now had a clue as to why Berkley Rhodes was such a successful journalist. The airlock was located midships, on the opposite side of the compartment from the belly hatch. Kingsolver had already attached his headset prong to the intercom next to the hatch and was talking to the incoming taxi: "Okay, you're looking good ... turn twenty degrees starboard, keep that inclination ... there you go, looking good." Through a small window in the airlock hatch, Parnell could see the taxi as it cautiously approached Constellation's hull, carefully avoiding the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer. The taxi was a long white cylinder with open cone-shaped 10 90 ALLEN STEELE cages at its bow and stern. Small liquid-fuel engines, mo on swivels, were located inside each cage; a hardsuited as naut occupied the forward cage, clinging to the lateral st with one hand as he manually controlled the bow rocket. of the forward cage, above the taxi's fuselage and just beh the rubber docking ring, rose the pressurized pilot turret; nell could make out the pilot's head and shoulders throu circular windows as he followed the cargo grunt's hand nals. Two more hardsuited astronauts on EVA tethers clu grommets on the port side as they prepared to open the c hatch and unload the duffel bags belonging to the ferry's scrigers. As the taxi swung around for final docking, Parnell ca sight of the old USSF insignia above the cargo hatch. Pai above the insignia was the spacecraft's name: Harpers F A name with a double meaning: the taxi was christened only in honor of John Harper Wilson, the first man to set f on the Moon, but also for a Civil War battle. "Must be a Southerner running that boat," he comment "Not anymore." Kingsolver didn't look away from the dow. "Used to be Dan Caldwell's boat, but he went grou side last year. Drives a warehouse forklift now. Says it's be money." There was an audible thump as Harpers Ferry hard-do with Constellation; the rubber ring slid neatly into the r groove surrounding the hatch and instantly pressurized, ing an airtight seal between the two vessels. "Okay, yo in," Kingsolver said. "Resetting for fourteen PSI, over.' out his breath as he touched buttons on the control p equalize the atmospheres between the orbiter and the then cupped a hand over his headset mike. "Now they've got some kid running Dan's boat," he mured with obvious disdain as he glanced over his sho at Parnell. "Every time we do this, I'm scared he's goin ram my ship." "Why? He's a bad pilot?" Kingsolver stared at him. "Ever heard of Dr. Z?" Pa shook his head and the captain looked away. "You'll him," he muttered. "He's a load of laughs." THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 91 inted istro- Itruts Aft ,hind Par- Th its I sig- ng to ,argo pas- ught nted erry. not foot ted. vin- ind- Iter ked und rm- Yre let I to 1xi, .ur- der to ~Cll We 17 A couple of minutes later Parnell felt his ears pop as the atmospheres between the two vessels equalized. The passen- gers were shaking their heads and swallowing spit by the time Kingsolver undogged the airlock hatch and hauled it open. At least Dooley and B ' romleigh had gotten over their panic at- tacks, although both men still gripped vomit bags in their free hands. Parnell led the way through the airlock; the lock-lever of the taxi's bow hatch was covered with frost, freezing against the palms of his hands as he shoved it upward. "Right this way. Step lively now." The voice from within the chilly, cramped confines of the passenger cell was fairly young. "Just cram in and grab hold of something." The pilot could only be seen from his waist down to his feet, which were strapped into stirrups on top of a short plat- form. The feet were wearing scuffed black Doc Martens; above them were long, thin legs wearing faded Levis, and through a hole in the right knee peeped a pair of woolen long johns. The rest of him was invisible within the turret. Parnell pushed himself to the far side of the passenger cell, where he grabbed a leather ceiling strap next to a small port- hole. Through the tiny window, he could see the two astro- nauts outside Harpers Ferry; they had opened the hatch to the unpressurized bay behind the cell and were unloading cargo containers from the Constellation. His breath fogged the port- hole; it had to be thirty-five degrees at most inside the taxi. "It's cold in here!" Rhodes found a strap next to Parnell and clumsily fell against him, hugging herself for warmth. "Can you turn up the heat a little, please?" she called to the legs. "I can't believe how cold it is!" "Cold? You think this is cold? Try being outside with those guys. This is a lovely spring day in Minneapolis, compared to out there." The legs bent at the knees as the pilot lowered himself on his haunches from the turret. First came an old "Lollapalooza '92" sweatshirt, then a head'that was shaved almost bald, with a gold ring in its right car. The pilot had to squat low; in his mid-twenties he was at least 6'3", almost too tall to be working in space. "Hey, we've got a celebrity aboard!" His lantern-jawed f", ~- 92 ALLEN STEELE mouth arched into a wide grin as his gaze settled on Rh He stretched out a wool-gloved hand. "The name's C Curtis Zimm. My friends call me Dr. Z. Welcome aboar "Berkley Rhodes. ATS News." She gave him an unco able smile as she reluctantly extended her own hand. "I know. Watch your show all the time." Dr. Z graspe hand palm-up in a formal handshake. "Always a pleas have a member of the fourth estate aboard. Perhaps we do an interview sometime while you're. . . " "Hey, man! Turn up the heat or something! It's fu freezing in here!" Dr. Z turned to face Dooley, whose nasal whine had rupted the little chat. "What's it to you, boomer?" he a dropping Rhodes's hand. "And watch your language ... t a lady present." Before Dooley could do more than glare at him, smiled again. "Oh, you must be the right honorable Dooley. I've got a message for you, passed along from a m friend." Confusion crept into Dooley's face as he nestled in b Rhodes. "A message?" he asked uncertainly. "What s message?" Curtis Zimm peered at him long and hard before his reappeared. "From out mutual friend Mr. Grid, of course said. "Says he wants you to call him tonight." Rhodes looked at Dooley. "Mr. Grid... ? " Before Dooley could answer, Dr. Z touched the e of his headset, listening intently to inaudible voices comlink. "Sorry to be short," he said apologetically, we're running a little behind schedule. Your stuff's aboa dog that hatch tight and we'll be off." His head and shoulders disappeared back into the t though he'd gone through a wormhole into another di sion. Which, from what little Parnell had witnessed, pro wasn't so far off the mark. "Who's Mr. Grid?" Lewitt asked. He was the last P through the airlock, sliding in just behind Cris Ryer. The senger cell was crowded now, with everyone jammed tog in the center of the compartment, jostling one another Aes. trtis. 11 fort- I her ,e to oulci ~kin' iter- ked, ,re's r. Z Paul tual sl de t of he one the 1but [, so THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 93 bows, knees, and feet. Kingsolver slammed the airlock hatch shut; Ryer leaned past Lewitt to close the taxi hatch and spin the lockwheel. "Friend of mine," Dooley said reluctantly. He glanced at Dr. Z's legs as if afraid that the pilot was eavesdropping. "Umm . . . just someone back home I keep in touch with on Le Ma- trix. I told him I'd send some e-mail from here." He shrugged noncommittally and pretended to look out a porthole, now fogged over from the combined respiration of the taxi's pas- sengers, Mr. Dooley, Parnell thought, you are one weird son of a bitch. "Okay now," Dr. Z called down from the turret, "everyone comfy?" He laughed, knowing they weren't. "You'd better be, Icause we're casting off." Another thump! and a shudder as Harpers Ferry disengaged from Constellation. Parnell wiped off the porthole next to him just in time to see the winged space plane drifting away. Earth was a blue-green hemisphere in the background that, along with the ferry~ quickly vanished from sight as the taxi turned around and headed for the Wheel. Welcome home . . t as len- ibly I Excerpt from "Lost In Space" by Lucas Trilling, New Times, May 1972 ~t doesn't seem possible, upon observing American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts training together in the massive centrifuge at the Von Braun Space Center, to believe even for a moment that their joint 6ssion a few years from now may be the last hurrah for either country's manned space program. I stood in the observation cupola above the giant room and watched the mockup of the Ares lander swinging round and round, hearing the Slavic-accented voice of Alexei Leonov calmly reporting the gradual buildup of g-force within the capsule, interrupted by Neil Arrnstrong-- "We're fine, let's go for another spin"-and thought, that's the way it should be, the way it should hove always been, Americans and Russians worOng together for a mission to Mors. And so it will be, The Intemational Mars Exploration Treaty is two years old and both countries are committed to the project, if only for the sake of preserving detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. Bobby Kennedy's ghost haunts Ares as well; no one can forget that the treaty was his brainstorm and that NASA, also his baby, was given its first major goal as a Feder-al agency by the Mars prognam. His next stop in Texas after Dallas would have been to deliver a speech here in Houston. It is not enough that the NASA launch center at Cape Canaveral was renamed in his memory; an American flag on Mars, stand- ing alongside the hammer and sickle of the U.S.S.R., is the only way this country can pay tribute to its fallen president. Yet, like a ferry coasting into orbit, the only thing that seems to be keeping the American space program going is mass and inertia; the boost- ers have been exhausted and dropped off, and all that remains is free-fall. President McCarthy's inability to set a long-term agenda for NASA is only one more indication that his administration has been a failure, and the only thing George McGovern and George Wallace agree upon is that the natchet will fall on the space budget, regardless of who wins the November election. Without leadership from the top, the AmeHcan space program cannot prosper for very long. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ken- ne~y-an unbroken chain of presidencies have supported the Final Fron- ter, from World War 11 through the Cold War, all in the name of 96 ALLEN STEELE defeating The Enemy, whether it be Nazi Germany or Communist Russ But after we beat the Russians to the Moon, only to then discover th the Soviet space program had been so badly mismanaged that they we barely in the running, the impetus fell off. What glory and honor is be gained from a race when the opponent crosses the finish line in wheelchair? By then, the Space Force was so thoroughly affiliated with Americ role in Vietnam that it was difficult for many to disassociate Space Stati One and Project Luna from the secret bombing of Cambodia and t My Lai massacre. Orbital reconnaissance from the Wheel didn't st American casualties from mounting south of the DMZ, and a USSF u form looks just like a USAF uniform to an antiwar demonstrator with fl in his belly and spit in his mouth. Even after Kennedy phased out the Space Force and replaced it NASA, public sentiment continued to shift against space exploration. haps the first indicator was the Nielsen ratings; someone in the Whi House should have paid attention when Ster Tre~ once the number tw show on television, was canceled because of bad ratings. Or they shou have noticed the "Fuck the Moon" buttons college students were wea ing. It hardly matters now. One by one, the American public has bee turning against the space program, long before the politicians got hip. We'll go to Mars, if only because the funds have already been ap' priated and because no one wants to back out on the Russians. Yet, I Archie Bunker and his family, stranded together on a forgotten lu outpost where Edith serves up endless slices of green algae pie and head always forgets to shut the airlock, America is clearly lost in sp u - t at were is to in a ~rica's tation d the Sto P F uni- h fire t with i. Per- Nhite ~r two ;hould wear- been lip. Ippro- et, like lunar Meat- ice.... E-1-G-H-T 2/16195-1402 GMT limbing the ladder through the Wheel's western spoke from the hub, Ryer felt the tug of gravity gradually increase with each rung she passed. She had been virtually weightless when she left the hub, and at first the spoke seemed to be a horizontal tunnel, its ladder a nigh-useless handrail running along its ceiling. A third of the way down the spoke, she found a sign painted in large red letters on the walls: USE LADDER NOw. By then the tunnel had become a vertical shaft, the ladder a necessity. For the first time in a couple of hours, Cris could feel the objects in her pockets, and her duffel bag hung like a dead weight from its shoulder strap. Her hair settled back down around her neck, her breasts no longer seemed to bob an inch above her chest, and her arm and leg muscles had to exert themselves once again. It was almost a shame; she had forgotten how much fun zero-g could be. Experiencing a moment of vertiginous nausea as her guts resettled, she paused on the ladder to briefly close her eyes and reorient herself to the up-and-down perspective. Breathe deeply, she told herself. Take it easy ... A foot clanged on the rung next to her left hand, barely missing her head: "Oops! Sorry." Glancing up, she saw Parnell holding onto the ladder just E-V 98 ALLEN STEELE above her, his duffel bag suspended a few inches over shoulder. He gazed down at her with concern. "You okay? asked. "I'm okay. just resting a sec." She noticed that his face w ashen. "How are you doing?" Parnell nodded. "Fine. . . fine." He looked around the sha pretending not to be unsettled by the gravity gradient. "La time I was here, this thing was lined with rope nets. Made t climb a little easier." He took a deep breath. "And the el still worked." "The elevator hasn't been used in years," Cris said. cables wore out and-" "Nobody wanted to spend money to replace 'em." Pam shook his head. "Made it easier for the Geritol bunch. sure you're okay?" "Sure," she replied, and recommenced the long climb do to the torus. Two young NASA officers had met the lunar team wh Harpers Ferry docked at the south turret. Once everyone h reclaimed their bags, one lieutenant led Rhodes, Bromlei and Dooley down the eastern spoke to their quarters on o side of the wheel, while the other officer escorted Parne Lewitt, and Ryer to operations center on the opposite en& the station. It had been almost four years since Cris's last to Space Station One, and it was a relief to cycle through main airlock; at least she was off the Constellation and longer had to deal with Kingsolver and Trombly. There w t 1 probably homophobes among the station crew, bu if so, wisely kept their prejudices to themselves. The unwritt code among Wheel personnel was that if you disliked so one because of race, politics, religion, or what they did in t1h privacy of their bunks during off-hours, you either kept opinions to yourself or transferred to a ground job. Put shut up, or get-off: that was the rule. Not that there was a shortage of privacy inside Spaq, tion One anymore. Signs of the cutbacks which had trirrin the crew by two-thirds were obvious the moment Cris floated from the docking node into the suit-up compartment The walls of the spherical chamber had once been crammed THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 99 her he was ;haft, 'Last e the vator "The xnell You lown vvhen e had [eigh, -i one rnetl, nd of visit ,h the id no were they ritten I 50me- ~n the your it UP, e Sta- -nmed loated :. The t with t _71, spacesuits and racks of helmets: one for each crew member, in the unlikely event of an emergency which would force a mass evacuation of the station. Now only thirty-odd suits re- mained; the rest had been taken back to the Cape and ware- housed as surplus. Lewitt and the j.g. were waiting for Ryer and Parnell at the bottom of the ladder. "Right this way, please," Lieutenant Fri- erson said, holding open a hatch that led onto Deck One. "The commander's waiting for you in Main-Ops." The Wheel had never been made for comfort or aesthetic appeal. Its bare metal walls were studded with rivets and painted a utilitarian shade of gray; small blue plastic door signs affixed to hatches and the occasional red fire extin- guisher or intercom were the only colors. The torus had about as much charm and homeyness as an old Polaris sub, yet it occurred to Cris that it had always been full of life. The last time she'd been here, one couldn't walk ten feet down an up- ward-curving corridor without having to stand aside and allow another crew member to squeeze by. One heard voices con- stantly: conversations through half-open hatches and air- ducts, general announcements from ceiling speakers, people talking to each other in the corridors. if you remained stand- ing in one place for a short amount of time, you would proba- lily see half of the crew walk past, heading for duty-shifts or taking care of roster details or just getting a little exercise by jogging the decks. What life aboard the Wheel had lacked in style, it made up for in round-the-clock human activity. Now, there was not even that. Most of the hatches they passed were shut, some sealed and locked, and they didn't need to stand aside for anyone as they marched toward Main- Ops. No voices. No intercom messages. No light jazz or coun- try music coming from the officers' wardroom. just the tread of their shoes on the threadbare carpet of the corridor, the hol- low sound of air circulating through wall vents, the faint gur- gle of water running through ceiling pipes from one ballast tank to the next. "I think everyone's gone AWOL," Parnell said quietly. Cris nodded. "That or the biggest furlough you've ever seen." ALLEN STEELE "Hey, look!" Lewitt said, pointing somewhere just ahe "I saw a tumbleweed!" //Maybe they all got abducted by UFO's..." "Your congressman, more likely." Dismal laughter, humorless and flat. Space Station One a cold ghost town, spent and used up. if there was a muse big enough to hold a 250-foot bicycle tire, then the Wheel longed there. They were walking through an historical relic, and even tory didn't seem to give a damn anymore. I Main-Ops was the only place where there seemed to be life remaining aboard the Wheel, if only because it was station's nerve center and, as such, was manned on a twe four-hour basis. The operations center was the largest single compartin within Space Station One. While the rest of the torus was vided into three concentric decks, Main-Ops was a do decker comprising half of one of the station's twenty t sections. They stood on a catwalk overlooking the cen floor, which was lined with carrels much like Launch Con at the Cape. An electronic Mercator projection of the glo traced with parabolic curves depicting the Wheel's footp as it orbited Earth, took'up one entire wall, and above the was a set of dial clocks displaying the various time zones. Main-Ops was dimly lit. Most of the illumination ca from computer screens that cast a pale blue glow across faces of the duty officers who were seated at the carrels c versing quietly with one another via headset mikes. A la printer chattered as it churned out the endless scroll of station's logbook; the air held a vague odor of coffee from enamel mugs nearly everyone had on their desks. A hatch opened on a balcony at the far end of the catwa a young man in jeans and a flannel shirt stepped through trotted down the spiral staircase to the main deck, careles allowing the hatch to remain ajar. Through the hatchw could be seen a smaller, single-deck compartment, its w lined with television monitors. The Earth Observation Center. There was a time, Ryer was I ~Unl I be- ient s di- J-Ac- Drus itral Itrol obe, irint rnap ime the _01-1- aser the the alk; and ssly Way ,alls THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 101 called, when she would have had to show Top Secret security clearance to an armed guard posted just outside the hatch be- fore she was allowed to enter the EOC, and leaving its hatch open would have been unthinkable. That was back in the days when Space Station One's role had been almost exclusively military and the screens would be displaying any number of scenes relayed to the Wheel by ISPY, the space telescope posi- tioned in polar orbit 1,075 miles above Earth: Soviet subma- rines surfacing off the coast of Cuba, troop movements in the Angolan desert, suspicious-looking freighters gliding between China and North Vietnam, U.S. Navy carrier convoys heading toward the Philippines, NATO exercises in the North At- lantic. In its time, the Wheel had helped keep the Cold War nice and chilly. indeed, a former Space Force officer named John WdIker had been sent to prison for life for selling ISPY's or- bital parameters to the Russians; most of his information had been stolen during duty tours aboard the Wheel. That time was over. Long before the Soviet Union had crumbled, un- manned spy satellites in low orbit had rendered ISPY, and by extension Space Station One itself, obsolete. While ISPY could only pick out the vague shape of a Soviet boomer as it entered Havana Harbor, the cameras aboard a KH- I I had superior resolution, making it possible for a CIA analyst in McLean, Virginia, to tell if it was an Oscar, Delta, or Ty- phoon-class sub ... and the Keyholes' orbits could be reposi- tioned far more easily than ISPY, making them flexible in ways never possible for either the Wheel or the Mole. Now the Wheel served other purposes. ISPY monitored en- vironmental degradation in South America and Africa, chart- ing the recession of Brazilian rain forests and the growth of deserts in the Sudan, while the station itself kept track of the low-orbit Global Positioning Satellites, occasionally dispatch- ing repair teams to overhaul them. Every now and then, DEA or Coast Guard intelligence experts would come aboard and try to ferret out the location of secret coca plantations in Co- lombia and Mexico, but that was the closest affiliation the Wheel still had with national security. In terms of day-to-day wlmll~;_~ 102 ALLEN STEELE military application, the Wheel was now as useless as filled-in Minuteman ICBM silos scattered across the Midwe And it showed. Leaning against the catwalk rail, couldn't help but notice how antiquated Main-Ops had come. The workstation computers were clunky old Digit whose CRT's flickered with snow, their keyboards first-gen ation AT-clones that audibly clacked with each keystro Vintage 1985 hardware, she guessed, and her observation confirmed when she spotted an operator carefully slidin 5.25-inch floppy into a disk drive. Some of the other equ ment made the computers look brand-new in comparison; t master console of the attitude- control bay beneath the sta well resembled a prop from some fifties science fiction m and much of the equipment in Main-Ops, with its dials meters, looked as if it had been installed when Cris was kindergarten. Even the round air-conditioning vent in the ce ing vaguely reminded her of a hubcap from a 1963 01 mobile. A junkyard owner would love this place. "Gene! How the hell are you?" Cris looked around as several pairs of soft-soled shoes up the spiral staircase. A tall, skinny man with a horsy- ing face and a gray mustache appeared on the catwalk. He followed by three other men who seemed to be an entour Gene Parnell turned away from a wall plaque he had b studying. "Hello, Joe," he said as he formally extended right hand. "Nice to see you again." "Aw, don't gimme that crap!" The man ignored Parne hand as he rushed down the catwalk and gave him a bear- instead. Parnell gasped slightly, the surprise on his face evident before he wrapped his arms around the tall man's narro shoulders and returned the hug. "Nice to see you, too, Com modore." "Commodore ... Jesus, you're such an asshole." Joe Lau lin broke the hug and stood back, his hands lingering on P nell's shoulders. "Eleven years since I last saw you do you want to do, salute me or something?" Ryer traded looks with Lewitt; he grinned and gave a M ~s the ~west. Ryer id be- igitals gener- troke. in was ding a equip- )n; the ,~ stair- novie, [Is and was in ie ceil- olds- es trod y-look- He was )urage. td been led his arnell's ear-hug ,vident, narrow ), Com- Laugh- on Par- . what THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 103 shrug. As junior officers, they had never known Laughlin as anything except Old Joe, the NASA commander of Space Sta- tion One; although formally he wore the U.S. Navy commo- dOTe's stripe-and-star insignia on his shoulders, he seldom demanded that anyone salute him. Joe Laughlin didn't try to hide the fact that he was the last of the original Project Luna astronauts who was still on active duty. He had retired from the Space Force when it was phased out in 1972, although he retained his rank by serving in the naval reserve. During the next twelve years he worked as a civilian consultant for Lockheed and, as a sideline, wrote and published a few science fiction stories under the pseudonym of Hal Robinson. For a time, that had been all right with him, but when he received the Nebula Award for best SF short story of 1984 two weeks after he lost his wife to cancer, something snapped deep inside that he still wouldn't discuss. He resigned from Lockheed, stopped writing, rejoined NASA, and retrained for astronaut duty; anyone who thought he was over the hill quickly reconsidered after they watched him master a flight simulator at Von Braun. Five years ago, NASA had given him command of Space Station One-rumor had it that he finally resolved the age question by trouncing former NASA administrator James Fletcher and Senator Al- bert Gore on the golf course-and he had been here ever since. Save for an occasional vacation groundside to visit his grown- up son in Alaska, he seldom left the Wheel, contenting him- self with the role of gruff Dutch uncle to a crew who, by and large, were young enough to be his kids. A framed photo of his wife hung above the desk in his quarters; his acrylic Nebula cube, scratched and cracked, was used as a paperweight. "Jesus, that beard looks terrible." Old Joe scowled at his for- mer Luna Two crewmate as he stood back to inspect him. "You could do something about the gut, too. What's Judy doing, feeding you barbecue all the time?" "Barbecue, pork rinds, and a six-pack of beer every day. Breakfast of champions." "For the love of . . ." Laughlin's voice trailed off in disgust. He caught sight of Ryer and edged around Parnell to graciously 104 ALLEN STEELE extend his hand to her. "Hey, I'm sorry, Cristine. I al missed seeing you back there. Welcome back, Captain." "Thanks, Commodore ... Joe. " Laughlin's hand grasped palm for a moment longer than necessary, his humorous e searching hers for some reaction; she gave him a polite s before gently pulling her hand free. Old Joe was notorious coming on to female astronauts; although he had never d anything that could be misinterpreted as sexual harassm it was clear that he was not a believer in political correctn either. Parnell coughed politely and nodded toward the three standing behind Laughlin. "I take it these are our people," said. "Hmm?" Old Joe managed to tear his attention away fr Cris. "Oh, yeah ... sorry for- my lack of manners. Permit to introduce you to-" "Leamore," the first man said, stepping past Laughlin to tend his hand. "James Patrick Leamore, Commander Pam Executive vice-president of lunar operations, Koenig Selen Delighted to meet you." As Parnell grasped his hand, Leamore gestured to one of companions, then the other. "And this is Uwe Aachener Markus Talsbach. They're astronaut-candidates, curren completing their training period." Another round of handshakes as Conestoga's flight team troduced themselves to the mission's remaining passenge With the exception of Paul Dooley, it was the first time t NASA astronauts had met the contingent from Koenig Se nen GrnbH. The German company had insisted upon tra its crew members independently, as an acid test of how European methods of selecting and educating its astro stacked up against NASA's. The agency had balked at thi course, until Koenig Selenen made it clear that although astronauts would have already passed muster in basic,sp survival techniques, they were not expecting to pilot Con toga and would act instead as passive observers. NASA fina caved in. After all, once this mission was completed, Koe Selenen would be the sole owners of Tranquillity Base; ho -.lost . her -yes nile 5 for lone Lent, ness men it he ~rom t me o ex- -nell. men. )f his r and ently m in- Tgers. e the Sele- ining I well nauts lis, of 9h its ;pace- ~ones- Inally 'oenig ; how THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 105 well or how poorly they prepared their space crews was up to them. The agency in turn had insisted on training Dooley at the Von Braun Space Center; since the hacker would be expected to help reactivate Tranquillity Base and assist with the dis- posal of the Teal Falcon missiles, he needed to know a little more about the lunar base than the German astronauts. Leamore was much what Ryer had expected from reading his dossier during earlier briefings. Although in his mid- forties, he looked considerably younger, his build slender and athletic, his brown hair only slightly speckled with gray. A former RAF fighter pilot who had moved to Berlin after earn- ing a post-graduate degree in international business from Ox- ford, he had worked his way up through the European aerospace community until he joined Koenig in the early eighties, just as it was beginning to seriously invest in com- mercial space enterprise. When the company formed its Sele- nen division, Leamore was the person they'd chosen to head up the lunar operations program; in fact, he had been the com- pany's chief negotiator when it opened discussions with the Dole administration over acquiring Tranquillity Base from NASA. "Captain Ryer, delighted." "Likewise, Mr. Leamore." "James, please, . ." l'you can call me Cris." Not bad for a British expatriate working in Germany. If Koe- nig Selenen GmbH came out a winner with its lunar program, Leamore stood to earn quite a few deutsche marks for his ef- forts. Euro-yuppie or not, Ryer thought, she was probably shaking hands with the first millionaire to make his fortune from the Moon. If only the American business community had been so foresighted. Had that been so, of course, then most American computers wouldn't have Japanese micro- chips, most American cars wouldn't be constructed of materi- als made in Europe and Asia, most American airliners wouldn't be built in France, and most Americans wouldn't have their paychecks drawn on banks owned by God knows who, but it sure as hell wasn't other Americans. 11 106 ALLEN STEELE Leamore had a nice, firm handshake. He helped her remember the computer diskette in h pocket. Aachener and Talsbach were stiff and overly formal; stumbled over their English as, one at a time, they s hands with Ryer. In their mid-twenties, both were almst young enough to be her children; however, if she'd ever been inclined to become pregnant during the time when she pre- tended to be heterosexual, she would have been 11 d -app:d e produce sons as colorless as these two. Aachener li brown hair and Talsbach's hair was jet black, and Talsbach was slightly shorter than Aachener: beyond that, there was little to distinguish one from the other. Finely chiseled foa- tures, good looks, Teutonic demeanor: the last time she'd seen guys this perfect, it was in a New York gay bar, and at least the Village queens had more life to them than these Aryans.... "Glad to meet you," she said to Talsbach, hoping that nei- ther of them could guess what she'd been thinking. "So . uh, you're astronaut- candidates, right? How far alon~ in trai ing are you?" "Ah . . . yes, we're astronaut- candidates," Talsbach replied haltingly. "We have almost completed our ... ah, tr 'ning -The final phase, this is." program. He looked nervously at hig colleague. "Yes, Captain, this is the final phase of our training program," Aachener said. His English was a little better. "We have been in orbit before, in our shuttles, but this is the first time we will be going to the Moon." "To the Moon, yes, the first time," Talsbach said. h Ost to M UM alch "And we are looking forward to the voyage ... the trip, how you say?" Aachener's gaze was unwavering; although his mouth was stretched in a smile, the corners of his eyes didn't crinkle. A cold, false grin. "And how many times to the Moon have you been there?" "This is my eighth trip.. i Im. N uh, voyage." Cris hesitated. lum, I haven't been back in four years, so it's been a long time "A long time, yes." Aachener nodded his head. "Yes, a long time." Talsbach also nodded his head. AM 4 THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 107 Oh, my God, she thought, it's Hans and Franz a her Cris stepped back from them, trying to find a way out of the conversation. She spotted Jay Lewitt standing alone on the they catwalk behind her; catching his eye, she smiled at him, then ;book tumed back to the two astronauts. "Well, it's nice to meet you [most guys," she said. "We'll have to get together again sometime - been before the flight, okay?" e pre- American colloquialisms seemed to confuse Talsbach. led to Agaiii he cast an uncertain glance at Aachener, who once light more responded with that humorless smile. "Yes, Captain," sbach he replied. "We'll get together again soon. Pleasant to meet e was you./I d fea- Ryer kept a straight face until her back was turned to the A seen Germans, then allowed herself a wry grin as she walked over least to Lewitt. The flight engineer stood next to the wall plaque two Pamell had been inspecting before Laughlin and the Koenig Selenen team had arrived. tt nei- "How did you like the Germans?" he asked. ;o ........."They're great," she whispered. "They're here to pomp train- ... you OPP, "Jesus, Cris . . ." Lewitt hid a smile behind his hand as he eplied caught the old Saturday Night Live gag. "Better not let Gene iining hear you say that." "Who gives a shit?" She sagged against him for a moment, this is quivering with barely suppressed laughter. "I mean, these are I His the guys who are taking over Tranquillity?" )re, in "Cris_lf to the "'I'm a Choiyman astronaut in training, yah to the ~ trip, gh his didn't Moon "But Moon the first time, I am. Want some schnitzel, yah?' "C'mon, Cris ... it's not that funny." No, it wasn't funny, but it was the first good laugh she'd had all day, If Laurell were here, she would understand. But Laurell was probably at work by now, dealing with a dozen lawsuits before she went home to curl up on the couch, de- vour the rest of the Ben & Jerry's in the fridge, and watch Sein- feld on TV, while she was stuck up here with guys so straight they couldn't ... Her eyes rose to the plaque on the wall, and the laughter died-in her throat. She had seen it many times before, during ALLEN STEELE previous visits to the Wheel, so it was nothing new. Noneth less, she felt shame wash over her as she saw the long list, names carved into the slab of lunar aluminum. Twenty-three men and women, their lives lost during t1. construction of Space Station One and the establishment ( Tranquillity Base. Victims of random EVA accidents, for tb most part, although a few had been killed while rescuing othc astronauts. One had died during the installation of th, Wheel's nuclear reactor, and three on the list had been incin crated during an uncontrolled Atlas-A reentry through Earth'! atmosphere back in 1961. She had never met any one of them, but it didn't matter, Their names were inscribed here, and this was a sacred place; laughing at stupid Kraut jokes was as appropriate as goofing off in Arlington National Cemetery. But for the grace of Godl her own name could be on this list.... And it was never too late, because whoever had engraved, the names on this plaque had been careful to leave several "Let's go find something to eat," she said softly, turning away from the plaque. "I think I need some ice cream. " It was hard to say why, because she felt very cold just now. blank spaces at the bottom. I I Nonethe- ling hst of V aring the ~ment of s, for the ing other i of the ~n incin- h Earth's matter. td place; goofing Of God, ngraved several turning st now. The ATS Evening News; broadcast August 19, 1976 Don Garrett, anchor: Among the items included in the McGovern Ad- ministration's proposed "Big Freeze" federal budget is the gradual reduc- tion of spending for the nation's space program, Science correspondent Oyde Fuller reports from NASA's Von Braun Manned Space Center. (Re rootoge: Neil Armstrong and Alexei Leonov stepping off the lodder or Ares One to plant U.S. and Soviet flojZs on the surface of Mors; the exterior of the Wernher von Braun Manned Spoce Center in Texas,) Fuller (VO): Barely a month after the successful landing of the 'interna- tional mission to Mars, White House sources have told ATS News that 'resident McGovern will soon propose cutting NASA's budget by ten to twenty percent over the next four fiscal years. Although the President hasn't vet officially made this announcement, it has been supported by Key members of Congress. (On-screen: Senator Walter F. Mondole, D., MN) Mondale: The fact of the matter is that taxpayers are sick and tired of throwing away their money I n space. If NASA had their way, they'd be building permanent bases on Mars. What about building permanent houses for poor people in America? We've got too many problems right here at home that need to be taken, care of first... (Shot or Senator William Proxmire, D., W1, addressing the Senate. Vice- Presidentfirnmy Carter watches from his seat behind the podium) Proxmire: We've got runaway inflation in this country, government spending is out of control ... and NASA wants us to shell out five billion dollars next year to send a space probe to Jupiter! I've got a better idea .,, let's send a rocket to NASA with a note inside: "Forget it, pal! Show's (File footoge: Space Station One, Tranquillity Bose, the launch of Ares One fmM JOW or~)jf above [:rirtli I Fuller (VO): Critics of the space program point to the fact that total costs of the American space effort have exceeded two hundred billion ddlars over the last twenty years. This includes the maintenance of the Wheel, the Tranquillity Base lunar outpost, and the American half of the Ares program, They also cite recent Gallup polls showing that fifty-five percent of the American public believes NASA receives too much money, However, NASA supporters disagree with this assessment... (On-screen: Sidney Brown, president of the National Space Institute) 110 ALLEN STEELE Brown: For each tax dollar spent on space over the last two decad every American has earned two dollars a year from technological spino Microelectronics, weather and communications satellites, advanced me cal technology, even digital watches and household appliances ... all possible because of scientific developments made while we were send people into space. We can't just shut off the tap now and pretend tl~ the country will continue to be a world leader in high technology ... (File rootage: President McGovern stepping off Air Force One; the A astronauts working on the surface of Mors; Republican presidential condidc Gerold R. Ford shaking hands during a campaign stop) Fuller (VO): Several sources at NASA, who declined to be interview for this story, charge that the President is trying to win reelection ne November by roping NASA into his Big Freeze program. They also cla that the White House leak was timed to correspond with the last fe days of the Ares expedition, which so far has failed to find any eviden, of life on Mars. This itself Is a major embarrassment to the space agenc since it had all but promised discovering extraterrestrial life on the n planet in return for funding the mission. Likewise, the Ford campaigr support for the space program has been lukewarm at best ... (Shot of Republican candidate Gerold R. Ford, speaking to a reporte mike in the middle of a small crowd of supporters) Ford: Well, uh ... I like space. I think space is good ... and, uh, I thii the astronauts are doing a swell job, and ... uh, I look forward to seeir them come home ... excuse me ... (Shot of Clyde Fuller standing in front of the entrance of the Von Brot Space Center.) Fuller: Although the administration's proposal is hardly seen as a rriaj~ issue in this campaign, it i's one more sign that neither Democrats ~, Republicans are willing to embrace space exploration as much as thE did in years past. This can only be seen as an omen for NASA 'in years t come. Clyde Fuller, ATS science correspondent, reporting from NASA Von Braun Space Center in Houston. .hink !eing na~or s nor they ars to A'S'N"s NTWE 2/16/95-2145 GMT he quarters he had been as- signed were not much larger than the Amtrak sleeper com- partment it closely resembled: a narrow metal bed with a thin mattress that folded down from the bulkhead; a small chair, a fold-down desk, a wall phone; a small round porthole in the curved wall. When the lieutenant slid open the door and showed it to him, Dooley's first impulse had been to ask if anything more spacious was available. "Not unless you're the commander, sir." Lieutenant Hollis was politely amused. "This is one of the VIP cabins ... every- one from senators to movie stars has slept here. Come over to L next section, and I'll show you the bunk I've been living in for the last two months." "The bunk?" "Yes, sir. Six and a half feet by two and a half feet, with a locker and a curtain, and it's all mine." The lieutenant pointed to the porthole on the far side of the compartment. "Count your blessings, Mr. Dooley. I'd kill to have a window by my bed." If Dooley could have given it to him, he would have; as soon j~ Hollis was gone, he hastily lowered the porthole's louvered blinds, shutting out the ever-spiraling Earth which threatened to make him spacesick all over again. Then he folded down I 112 ALLEN STEELE the bunk, shoved his laptop computer beneath it, took off sneakers, switched off the overhead light, and did his bes get a little sleep. As it turned out, he didn't have to try very hard. It had b nearly twenty hours since he had last slept, and the lau had left him more exhausted than he thought. At some po he was briefly awakened by Hollis knocking at the cabin d telling him that it was time for dinner mess. Dooley igno him, the j.g. went away, and he went back to sleep. When he finally woke up, he had no idea how much ti had passed; with the light switched off and the port closed, the cabin was as dark as a tomb. He raised his Ti close to his face and pressed the stud: only five P.m., wh confused him until he remembered that he had neglected reset his watch to Greenwich time. What do you call jet- when you've been traveling on a spaceship? The corridor was vacant when he slid open the door a peered out. So far as he could tell, no one else was in the section. It took him another minute to recall the sched the ATS reporters were supposed to be doing a live interv with the flight crew at 2200 hours. Naturally, that would in another part of the Wheel, and since he had already skip mess, they must have decided that it wasn't important wake him up. just as well; despite almost eight hours of sl he was still a little queasy, and he wasn't quite ready to cover the pleasure of VIP cuisine aboard this tub. Dooley found towels, a bar of soap, a sponge, a toothb and a small tube of toothpaste in the locker. That was enough, but the men's bathroom just down the corri something else altogether. Although its tiny shower sembled one in a cheap motel on Earth, there was no showe head on the plastic-tiled wall; instead, there were a couple spigots which only allowed water from the waist-level tap flow when he twisted them and shut off as soon as he let A small bubble-meter between the spigots regulated th ! W supply; just testing the system dipped the meter by almos percent. A sponge bath for the VIP suites. Of course. Water w something that was wasted up here; although water I 1 Ills ~t to ~een nch drit, oor, )red ime lole nex iich I to -lag and VIP ule; iew I be ,pcd t to cep, dis- -ish, rnal was I. re- /Vcr- ~e Of p to go. ater t 10 .sn't .nks til THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE lined the station's inner hull, the liquid they contained was irradiated and unsuitable for either drinking or bathing. The real Dooley would have known this from his training at the Cape and the Von Braun Space Center; once again, the other Dooley was uncomfortably reminded of just how shallow his own preparations had been. His masters had invested count- less hours in changing his face and making sure that he looked and talked just like a dead man, but they had neglected to tell him a few simple things, such as that he would likely blow his breakfast within five minutes of leaving Earth or that an evening bath aboard the Wheel amounted to swabbing himself with a wet rubber sponge.... At least the water was warm. He considered that as he mentally counted the dollars that would soon be deposited in a numbered bank account in Ge- neva. Gold-plated taps in his bathroom in Argentina: that's what he would have when it was all over and done with. Gold- plated taps, and a woman to scrub his back for him. The shower woke him up. He returned to his cabin and zipped into the blue cotton jumpsuit he found in the locker. He was hungry by now, and he briefly considered wandering through the station to find the mess deck, until he realized that dinner was long over by now and the crew chefs probably didn't keep leftovers for VIP's who had missed their chance. So be it. There were more important things that needed to bedonc. Examining the wall phone above his desk, he was pleased to see that it had a modem port. The last time the station's electronic infrastructure had been retrofitted, someone had apparently decided that visitors should be able to plug in lap- top computers. After folding the bunk against the wall, he lowered the desk, placed his Tandy/IBM on it, and used a slen- der cable to hardwire its internal modem to the phone. A slip of paper concealed inside his right shoe contained the instructions he needed to connect directly with the ATT system. Although it sounded complicated on paper, it was mainly a matter of using the Wheel's communications system to interface with the Iridium cellular Comsat network, which 114 ALLEN STEELE in turn linked him with Bellcore. The numbers he neede use to make the connection were already written down; calls he planned to make would be billed to the real Dool Citibank account. He picked up the receiver and placed a call to a motel r outside Brunswick, Georgia. "Hello?" a voice answered. "First race at nine o'clock," he said. "Fifty dollars on ja Leg." "First race, nine o'clock, fifty bucks on Jake's Leg," voice repeated. "Your name is Good Sex." "Good Sex. Got it." Dooley scribbled the words on a sli paper. "Thanks." The person at the other end of the line hung up wit replying. If anyone at Main-Ops had monitored the c would seem as if he had placed a bet on a horse race wi bookie in Georgia and, in return, had received a code nam which he could later confirm the bet. He switched on the laptop computer, typed LEm, and w until the opening image of the Le Matrix communicati program appeared on the screen. He then selected the lando, Florida, node of the computer network and dialed i it. There was a long pause as Iridium opened a line betw the Wheel and Le Matrix; then the net flashed a key-sha icon on the screen. Dooley's Le Matrix password was a vital bit of inform that had to be tortured out of him; the imposter hadn't able to access it after he'd taken possession of this laptop puter the night before, since it was not stored within the gram itself. It was a small but essential detail, since it was only way his employers could reliably pass key inform to him. GOODSEx, he typed. How sophomoric ... After a moment the computer responded, PASSWORD FIED, and the icon disappeared. So far, so good. Almost immediately, there was a double beep and, e-mail icon appeared on the screen. Using the trac Dooley moved the cursor to the envelope-shaped symbol toggled it. The system told him that he had two new mess s A )y ,d is ~r- to ,n .d. cm 'n- ~0_ h 0- or, Rl- he III, nd THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 115 waiting. He selected the first one and double-tapped the track ball. An instant later, a brief message appeared on the screen: FROM: RaceTrak TO: Thor200 DATE: 1/16/95 4:00 a.m. EST Copy code sequences as follows: 1-6-9-5-9-7 3-8-3-9.7-0 GIF attached. Dooley carefully wrote down the two sets of numbers, then moved the cursor to another icon, this one a paper clip attached to a file folder. He toggled it, then waited while the system decrypted a graphic-image file which had been sent to him. A few moments later, a scanned photo of his contact was painted on the screen. Dooley smiled; he recognized the face immediately. He closed the file and the message, then moved to the sec- ond message in the e-mail queue and toggled it. FROM: Mr. Grid TO: Thor200 DATE: 1/16/95 8:00 a.m. EST Watched the launch this morning on TV. Looked great! I'll be waiting for you tonight in the Castle. :) "Damn," he said under his breath. Whoever this Mr. Grid person was, he was beginning to get under Dooley's skin; first the unfinished conversation last night, then the unsubtle re- minder from the taxi pilot that he was expected to call Mr. Grid this evening. As if he didn't have more important things worry about right now ... Dooley sighed as he tapped nervously at his teeth with his fingertips. Like it or not, he needed to do everything possible to keep his cover intact, even if that meant talking to some fi tc keyboard jockey back on Earth. Otherwise, someone might get suspicious. But what the hell did Mr. Grid mean by "meeting him in tI he Castle"? Obviously it was a prearranged rendezvous point somewhere in Le Matrix. He thought hard, trying to remem- 116 ALLEN STEELE ber all that he had been told about Paul Dooley, u membered that Dooley's hobby was collecting comi What the hell. It was worth a shot ... He paged through Le Matrix's main directory ui cated the "Comics" area and entered it. At the bo long list of headingS-DC, TIMELY-ATLAS, DARK HORSE TIONS, BUY, SELL & TRADE, MESSAGE BOARD-he located a talking face marked "Chat." That would be real-time conversations. Dooley t only to be confronted by another long list. Some of ings were innocent enough (COMIX CLUB, WHO KILL MAN?, CEREBUS FANS ONLY), while others hinted a interests (LONELY HOUSEWIVES, MAN 2 MAN, SWINGERS any computer network, Le Matrix catered to all tast some of them gravitated to the sort of thing scraw the urinals in a bus station restroom. The imposte dorn wired into the commercial nets; so far as he cerned, net surfing was much the same as being a TV, and he had long since learned to parlay his hack into more lucrative pursuits. There was nothing on the comics board marked per se. Dooley was about to give up, when he notic buttons beside the list, the top one marked "Private Of course. The Castle would be a secret subrouti Le Matrix, inaccessible to any user who didn't know He toggled "Private Rooms" and, at the prompt, t Castle. The screen changed, displaying a blank gray slate. ment he thought he was alone; only his own logon, appeared at the top of the screen. Then another user-name appeared beside his own Hello? he typed. There was a pause, then: Welcome, m'lord. Enter of your own will. He stared at the screen. What the hell... ? A second later, another line appeared: You m hausted after your long journey to the north coun in, please ... rest comfortably by the hearth. ,N- of it, Id- ER_ ier e if We cl- 3n- to ills le, / t of S.11 hin no too, G. ex- Me THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 117 He hesitated, then typed: Mr. Grid? A longer pause, then: ((C'mon! ;p You're not making this any fun! Was the launch *that* rough?)) He was still confused. Sorry, he typed. It's been a long day. How are you doing? Waiting with great anticipation for your arrival. (Patting the sofa cushion.) Please, sit down ... you must be cold and tired. Dooley frowned. Obviously, this was Mr. Grid, albeit under another logon; the allusion to the launch attested to that, But wbat kind of crazy shit was the rest of this? He typed: Liftoff was rough. Vomited on the way up. Still feeling a little queasy. Another pause, then: I understand, m'lord. They say passage to the north country can be strenuous. Come sit by the fire and relax. Come sit by the fire? What did that mean? Dooley won- dered if he had stumbled into the wrong private room by mis- take. He recalled the message that Dr. Z, the taxi pilot, had passed to him. Was it possible that this could be Dr. Z pre- tending to be Mr. Grid? He typed: Mr. Grid, is that really you? The reply was instantaneous: ((YES, it's me, stupid! :( Now get your ass over here NOW!)) Before he could react, another line appeared: M'Iord must not be feeling well. Have some nectar ... it will soothe your stomach and make you feel better. And yet another line: Then come sit beside me, and warm thy feet by the fire. At a loss, Dooley shrugged. OK, it's YOU. Sorry. Yes, I'll have some nectar. He waited for a reply, which was not forthcoming. This was some sort of role-playing game; he was expected to respond to Mr. Grid's clues as if they were real-life stimuli. He typed: Thanks. That's good nectar. Feel better. Now I'll come over and sit down by the fire. A couple of seconds passed, then: I'm pleased, in'lord. (Her hand slips to the front of her blouse and opens the first but- So your journey was long and ... trying? 118 ALLEN STEELE Dooley abruptly realized that, whoever Mr. Grid w was not male. Or perhaps he was a male pretending t female in cyberspace. The gender switch made him u but there was no backing out now; he had to play along he could. Yes, milady, he typed hesitantly. Long and arduous i but it's good to linger by the hearth and sip nectar with The reply was immediate: It's good to hear this (ext her long legs until her toes almost touch his feet). An like the nectar? Nectar's good. What the hell was he supposed to say Your feet tickle, he added. Another pause, a little longer now, then: I thong might like the nectar. The young boy who contributed i exquisite. Baffled, he stared at the screen. Pardon me? he typed. A virgin, I think (unbuttoning her blouse a little exposing her pale breast). You will like him ... he's dungeon, awaiting your pleasure once we've sated ours His breath whistled through his teeth as he read this. ever Mr. Grid/LadyG was, Dooley had obviously been i ing in some sort of weird cybersex fantasy with him/her a bit of pedophilia on the side. Was there yet another involved, taking the part of this so-called young boy? Dooley didn't care to find out. Interesting idea, he but I prefer your company instead. (Reaches out to care breast.) Next line: And you don't find this repulsive? (s slightly to allow his hand further into her blouse). The very thought was enough to make him puke. He Not at all (she moans with pleasure as his fingers enc nipple). I'd rather have you instead. A moment passed, then: Where is the Duke? The Duke? Who the hell was the Duke? Probably a player in this game. I haven't seen the Duke lately, h Probably somewhere else. For almost a minute, there was no answer. He tried to upward to read what he had written a couple of minut lier, but the system wouldn't allow him to do this. H THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 119 ~, he be a best eed, M. ling you ow? you ore, the es. Tho- ulg- vith tyer 3ed, her ting )ed: le a -11yd )ed. r(li t~ar- was beginning to wonder if he had said something wrong, when a new line appeared on the screen: I must be gone (sitting up and rebuttoning her blouse). I beat the Dane calling for me from the upstairs bedroom. He will be suspicious if I tarry here much longer. He sighed with relief. More than likely, the Dane was an- other user, waiting to role-play this same masturbatory fan- t2sv. Whoever he was, he would probably enjoy this sort of thing much more than he did; masquerading as Paul Dooley was hard enough without also having to indulge his on-line wet dreams. Very well, he typed. I will come again soon, after I have returned from the north country. As an afterthought, he added, Don't let the Dane know I was here. A long pause. I shan't. Fare-thee-well ... Fare-thee-well, he responded. Good night. LadyG's logon vanished from the top of the screen, leaving Dooley alone in cyberspace. He took a deep breath as he fell back into his chair. That had been almost as tough as plastic surgery, but it was over and done with. He reached out to toggle the buttons that would ease him out of the private room, but he hadn't exited from Le Matrix before the computer double-beeped once more and a small rectangle appeared on the screen. INSTANT MESSAGE From- Mr. Grid Are you on the Wheel? C rist. He couldn't get rid of her. He shook his head and type ,d.: . Yeah, I'm here. He waited for a response. After a moment it came: Good. Bye. And that was that. He signed off Le Matrix, then stood up, wincing at the crick in the small of his back. The real Dooley must have been one repressed son of a bitch; it was just as well the little bastard was dead. "Mr. Grid," he murmured at the hard drive's blinking C- prompt on the screen, "you're going to have to find someone else to squeeze your tits from now on." Time to get back to business. He sat down again, typed DIR 120 ALLEN STEELE and watched as a long list of files scrolled up the screen. particular file he needed was right where he had located it night, listed under TF11LBAT. When he typed TF11LBAT next to the C-prompt, it flashed: Encrypted Password? He carefully typed in the first six-digit string he had ceived from RaceTrak. The computer repeated the sa prompt, and he entered the second string. The screen w blank for a moment and he held his breath. As he'd done with his Le Matrix password, the real P Dooley had safeguarded this file behind two sets of dou key encryptions, the numeric passwords of which he had c mitted to memory. It had taken hours to drag all that i tion out of him; if either of the keys was wrong, even by digit, then the imposter's mission was shot. He would longer be in a position to tell his masters the real code-nu bers, and no one else in the world knew those numbers. The denouement came a moment later as a subdirect appeared on the screen: a short list of file servers, each ea accessible at the stroke of his fingertips. Yes! " he whispered. " Gotcha! Ten queues, containing half of the computer pro needed to access the c-cube system of Teal Falco half of the program was safeguarded within the launch bunker on the Moon. Once both halves of were linked together, the complete command, control, communications of the missiles would literally be at his gertips. All too easy. . The imposter spent a few minutes scanning the algorit making certain that there were no gaps or hidden passwo Satisfied at last, he saved the file and folded the slip of p containing the encryption codes into his breast pocket. he switched off the computer, folded the screen, and stoo After a moment, he walked over to the porthole and rais the blinds. The distant view of Earth no longer bothere'd hi Tomorrow morning, he and his accomplice were on their w to the Moon. just then, there was a double knock on the door. He starte he ast ead le. aul ble- orn- ma- one no tory sily ram ther Icon ram and fin- THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 121 then hastily checked his watch. A moment later, there was a third knock. Speak of the devil, and right on time. He turried around and slid open the door. CBS broadcast transcribt, 60 Minutes; Sundav. Februarv 26, / 977 (File footage: Tronquillity Base as seen from the surface, where two astro nouts fire rocket mortars to simulate moonquokes; this is followed by shots ~rorn within the habitat: men working in laboratories, eating breakfast in the I mess compartment, sleeping or reading magazines in their bunks) ry Reasoner (VO): This is Tranquillity Base, the United States moonbase, as the public knows it . . . a civilian installation devoted to peaceful scientific research, permanently manned by a rotating crew of t*enty men and women, America's "Beachhead in Space" as NASA's public relations office likes to describe it. And this (A series of still photos: the Teal Falcon silos, as seen from the wall of Sabine Crater, a close-up shot of a silo hatch; the entrance to the launch bunker a blurred shot of on open silo, exposing the nose cone of a Minute- man 11 missile) Reasoner (YO): ... Is a part of Tranquillity Base the government would rather not have you know about ... six missile silos located at the bottom of Sabine Crater, about eight miles northwest of the base itself. Each silo :ontains a modified Minuteman 11 rocket, nearly identical to ICBM's found n SAC missile silos scattered across the United States, and each rocket is tipped with a one-megaton nuclear warhead. The installation is code- named Teal Falcon, and until these pictures were given to Sixty Minutes by a NASA civilian astronaut, who shot them with a hidden camera while visiting the site sever-al months ago, it was the most carefully guarded of American milita secrets . . . one which both the Pentapon and the White House flatly refuse to discuss. (Medium shot of an unidentified man, sitting in a darkened room with his face carefully shadowed, his voice electronically altered.) Source: The missiles have been on the Moon since September 1, ~969, when they were brought there by the Space Force during the Luna expedition. During that same expedition, the silos were excavated gh explosives and the missiles were put in place. Three months later, the Luna Three team completed the second phase of the operation by excavating the control bunker, and when they were done, the missiles were activated and the first two men were placed in the bunker, Reasoner (off-camera): And when was this? Source: December 25 1969 ... Christmas Dav. Reasoner: That was over seven years ago. Are the missiles still there? 124 ALLEN STEELE Source: Yeah, they're still there. I saw them myself a few months when I took the pictures. (File footage: President Richard Nixon waving to supporters during a p appearance; President Robert Kennedy walking into the Oval Office with U.S. Space Force officers, moonships leaving Earth orbit; a May Day po in Moscow's Red Square; President Eugene McCarthy being swom into o aboard Air Force One in Dallas, Texas) Reasoner (VO): According to a classified Pentagon document c named SR- 192, secret plans to base nuclear missiles on the Moon been in the works since 1958. President Nixon formally authohzed plan as a so-called "black budget" item during his second term in o meaning that it was not made known to the public or even most m bers of Congress. Although President Kennedy was publicly oppose the Space Force's predominant role in the American space eiTort, sou tell us that he allowed Luna Two to carr,/ the Minuteman 11 to the M before he phased-out the Space Force and replaced it with the civ National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Both leaders saw Falcon as an "ace in the hole" against the Soviet Union's r-apid escal of its strategic nuclear capability, and it wasn't until President McC short-lived term in the White House that the twenty-four-hour doo day watch at Teal Falcon was terminated. The men were taken ou the hole and the missiles were deactivated ... but they were n removed. Source: The missiles are ' still in the crater, and the bombs are them. The bunkers are sealed, but not permanently. They can be vated, targeted to virtually any place on Earth, and launched within a hours' notice. All President McGovern has to do is send a handful of Force officers back to the Moon with orders to enter the bunker and what needs to be done, and the birds will fly. (More film clips and still shots of Tea/ Falcon: a lunar tractor slowly r 16, down a steep roadway into the crater a high choin-link fence surroun crater, a distant shot from atop the crater wall of the silos; Earth rising o the barren moonscape) Reasoner (VQ): If a similar Minuteman were launched from Nebraska toward Moscow, the missile would be therein less than minutes. However, it's estimated that the same sort of missile wquld at least two days to reach its target if launched from the Moon. So place missiles nearly a quarter of a million miles away? It's because Falcon is intended as a second-strike weapon ... If the U.S.S.R. w attempt a sneak attack on the United States, the lunar missiles wo THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 125 remain untouched and, therefore, be used to retaliate against the Soviet Union. Likewise, the Soviets could not take out Teal Falcon as a preamble to war against NATO without tipping their hand, and in turn the U.S. could attack the U.S.S.R. On the surface, it appears to be sound logic ... or is it.? (On-cornero: Lex Klass, Professor of International Affairs, George Washing- ton University.) Klass: If Teal Falcon is indeed a lunar-based ICBM installation, then we're once again confronted with questions of basic mor-ality regarding strategic nuclear forces. By the time those missiles reach their targets, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. will have used their triad of land, air, and sea-based ICBM's to pound each other into the ground ... which means the Teal Falcon missiles are redundant at best. Reasoner (on-camera): But aren't they supposed to be a deterrent to nuclear war? Klass: It's tempting to call them a deterrent, but let's face it ... nuclear weapons have never been used during wartime. They arrived a little too late for World War 11, and they weren't used during Korea or Vietnam. They've never been detonated elsewhere than in the desert and in the South Pacific, No one knows exacfly how much damage they would cause to a city ... and as a result, it's easy for generals and politicians to think of them in abstract terms. Do you feel any safer knowing that there are nukes on the Moon? I don't. (Shot of the Moon as seen in lunar orbit; the camera slowly pons across bloc~ empty space until it focuses on distant Earth) Reasoner (VO): The official policy of the United States under the Mc- Govern Administration prohibits first-use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, though, the White House will neither confirm nor deny the existence of Teal Falcon. No one can say when the bombs at Tran- quillity Base will be removed ... if ever. (Shot of o ticking stopwatch) r - E - N 2/16195-2232 GMT lis second interview Berkley Rhodes went much better than the first, alt there was no reason why it shouldn't have. The first time around, he had been tense about f'-.e I and Rhodes had rubbed him the wrong way; by that e though, things were different. Although his attenti been occupied for most of the day with the last-minute of the mission, Parnell managed to get a quick nap in hi ters before catching dinner on the mess deck. Mindf Conestoga's crew would have to endure freeze-dried f the next few days, the Wheel's chefs had served up fres salad, London Broil with new potatoes and steamed asp and strawberry rhubarb for dessert. It was a feast, comp the station's usually spartan fare; together with rest a peace of mind that comes from knowing that everythi could be done had been done, it put Parnell in a much mood than he'd been in that morning. The only person who missed the send-off dinner wa Dooley. The lieutenant who had gone to summon t grammer had come back to report that Dooley was asleep in his cabin. Gene didn't mind his absence; the had to put up with Dooley's cynicism, the better. Alt Ryer was still being bitchy and it was difficult to unT' th ,h h, 91 id Is ,r- at .n. s, to le it ,r Ld Le .h id THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 127 what the Germans were saying half the time, the pressure was off, at least a little bit, for the first time in several days. By the time he was polishing off dessert, Parnell was beginning to wonder if he actually might enjoy this mission after all. All this made him relaxed and ready for the TV interview which followed dinner. Bromleigh set up his equipment on Main-Ops' main deck, where the big map made a perfect back- drop and his camera could be easily interfaced with the Wheel's communications system. A couple of duty officers surrendered their seats to Parnell and Rhodes, and after the lapel mikes were tested and Laughlin raised the overhead ceil- ing lights to unaccustomed brightness, Rhodes conducted a six-minute live interview which was fitted into the second slot of the half-hour ATS Evening News broadcast. Much to Parnell's relief, she avoided the sort of touchy- feeley questions which had spoiled their earlier interview, fo- cusing instead on specific technical aspects of the mission. Parnell had no trouble answering her questions; he crossed his legs and rattled off the usual facts and figures that any bright junior-high-school kid with an interest in space could have supplied. At the end, though, Rhodes threw him a hardball that caught him by surprise. "Commander, 11 she said, glancing up from her notes to look him straight in the eye, "doesn't it seem ironic that the last American mission to the Moon is for the purpose of undoing one of the mistakes of the past ... the placement of nuclear missiles at Tranquillity Base?" Parnell blinked and almost stammered when he heard that. She knew damned well that as commander of Luna Two it bad been his assignment to bring those Minutemen to the Moon in the first place; now she wanted him to admit that it was all a terrible mistake and, in effect, recant his past sins. In other words, was he still beating his wife? "It may seem like a mistake now, Ms. Rhodes," he replied, "but you have to remember that the world was a different place back in 1969. Right or wrong, many people thought the Teal Falcon missiles were a necessary deterrent to Soviet ag- gression." She opened her mouth to interrupt, but he didn't give her a 128 ALLEN STEELE chance. "Now, as commander of the second lunar expedit it was my duty as a Space Force officer to follow a Preside directive. It wasn't my job to set policy ... that role belo to the White House and the joint Chiefs of Staff, and at time it seemed to be the right thing to do. However, I'm g that times have changed and we're going to finally destroy missiles." "And you don't see any irony in this?" she asked. He allowed himself a faint smile. "Not really," he sai know how those missiles can be fired, so it's only appropr that I launch them myself." He shrugged. "I'm just happy t we're going to aim them at the Sun, not Earth." And that was that. When the interview was over, the camera shut down, he was unclipping his lapel mike, she walked over to "Sorry if I made you nervous with that last question. . began. "Nervous?" He gave her a blank stare. "No. Didn't m me nervous at all..-' You just tried to make me look like a i again, he added silently. "That was a good interview," he s diplomatically, handing her the tiny mike. "Thanks. I thought it went well, too." Rhodes glanced her shoulder as she wound up the mike cable. The duty cers had already retaken their seats, and Bromleigh was mantling his camera and tripod and returning them to th cases. "I heard there's a rec room over in Section 14," she s favoring Parnell with a smile. "Perhaps we could go over th and continue this discussion over a couple of beers." Jeez, did this lady ever turn it off? He had no problems A socializing with the press, so long as everyone understood t it was time to put away the notebooks and recorde done so on many occasions, in fact, with journal he trusted, either through past experience or by Rhodes didn't meet those criteria; one look in her him that she was still on the job, and that having her was tantamount to submitting to an off-the-record view. "Not unless they've changed the rules around her THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 129 said. "If there's any beer in the rec room, then it's the nonalco- holic variety. Booze and one-third gravity don't mix." She shrugged. "Fine with me. I'm not a heavy drinker anyway.// "Well. "Gene, are you through here?" Unnoticed, Joe Laughlin had slipped up behind them to clap a hand on Parnell's shoulder. "All done, Joe," Gene said, look- ing around at his old friend. "Did you watch the interview?" "Caught it off the Comsat feed in the next room." He looked at Berkley. "Nice job, Ms. Rhodes. You actually got Gene to tell the truth for once in his life." Rhodes fixed him with a venomous gaze. "Thank you, Commodore," she said stiffly, clearly irritated by his intru- sion. "I was just about to . . ." "You're welcome, maam," Joe said before he turned a shoulder to her. "Gene, we need to review the pre-launch checklist before you retire. Can you give me a few minutes?" Parnell could have hugged Joe. He had already gone over the checklist earlier in the day; Laughlin knew it, because he had been in the room with him, Lewitt, and the three engineers in charge of making certain Conestoga was flightworthy. "Sure, Joe. Berkley wanted me to show her the rec ro,m, but. . . s frigid; -juat s all right, Uornmander. Rhodes s smile wa had already figured things out. "I think I can find it my- self." "Thank you, maam. It's down on Deck 2, about halfway around on the other side of the station, adjacent to the crew quarters. just follow the noise." The commodore pointed to the hatch leading to the Deck 2 corridor. "We'll see you bright and early at 0600 tomorrow. Good night." Before she could reply, Laughlin led Gene away by the arm, guiding him toward a hatch on the other side of Main-Ops. Parnell caught a last glimpse of Rhodes walking over to Brom- Jeigh and saying something quietly to him; then Laughlin opened the hatch and guided him inside. ,They entered the lower deck of the observation center. Like compartment above, its walls were lined with TV moni- 130 ALLEN STEELE tors, but these displayed close-up views from the ISPY. room was empty, its round center table covered with m andlogbooks. "Thanks for rescuing me," Parnell said, once Laughlin slammed the hatch shut. "She had me cornered back ther "So I noticed. Besides, if anyone gets to buy you a bon age drink on this relic, it's me." Old Joe walked over to a cabinet and unlocked it with one of the keys on a ring gling from his belt. "Anyway, I sort of thought you might to see something." Parnell eyed the fifth of Maker's Mark the station c mander produced from the cabinet. "That? And I just through telling Ms. Rhodes that booze was verboten up he I/Oh, hell, Gene ... I did away with that rule a year ago long as no one shows up drunk for duty, I don't care if they crocked once in a while." He shook his head as he po whiskey into two shot glasses and passed one to Parn "This isn't the old days, brother. Cheers." "Cheers." It had been a while since Gene had knocked b a shot of good whiskey; it burned its way down his throat made him hiss with pleasure. So much for the twelve-ho from-bottle-to-throttle rule. Nevertheless, knowing he ha fly Conestoga tomorrow, one more drink was all he have before hitting the sack. "So what is it you w show me?" Old Joe glanced up at the chronometers above the wall, t walked to the control console beneath the screens. "Tho you might want to take a look at the future," he said sof he tapped instructions into the keyboard and coaxed a co of pots by a few millimeters. "You're going to love this." Studying the screens and chronometers, Parnell could that the space telescope was at 129 degrees east, swee down across China on its way to the equator. It was al tomorrow in that part of the world; on the screens, he c see dawn shadows thrown by the mountains of Manchuria 'We're coming up on the North Korean coast, just a miles south of Pukchong. About 41 degrees north." Joe's vo was very soft as he continued to fine-tune ISPY's tracking s THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 131 rhe iaps VOY- W I aan- I like ~0111- got ,re." ).So y get ured nell. I back t and ours- ad to -ould ed to then )ught tly as ouple I Id see ~eping [ready ~could [Tia. a few voice ig sys- tem. "Watch the screen on the left ... look sharp, because you're only going to see it for a couple of seconds." Parnell moved to the screen Laughlin indicated, the one dis- playing the telescope's highest resolution. At 1,500 feet, it was nothing compared to what a KH- 11, let alone one of the new radar-mapping Lacrosse spysats, could view from orbit. Nonetheless the view looked much as it would if he were fly- ing over the North Korean countryside in his Beechcraft, if such a feat were possible. Mountains, rivers, small villages connected by meandering roads ... then suddenly, as ISPY began to approach the coast of the Sea of Japan, a small cluster of off-white buildings sur- rounding a wide concrete circle. From the middle of the circle rose a tower; from one side of the tower there was a short, dark line ... a cement roadway. Close to it were a couple of small ponds, their still waters reflecting sunlight like an oasis; nearby was a row of squat, cylindrical tanks. The entire area was encompassed by a circular roadway. At first glance, Parnell thought it was a factory, but the lay- out was much too familiar. In fact, it looked like ... "I'll be damned," he murmured. "It's a launch complex." " Yep. That it is." Laughlin walked over to stand beside him. With the hand holding the shot glass, he pointed at the screen. "There's the vehicle assembly building ... there's the gantry tower, with the access ramp below it ... there's the acoustic suppression pools, and here's the fuel tanks. Everything's there." Parnell stared as the satellite view crept from the top of the screen to the bottom. "I don't see a rocket," he said after a moment, "but it's not an ICBM silo. Everything would be un- derground in that case . . ." "Oh, no. It's nothing like that." Laughlin took a sip of his whiskey. "They'd put it further inland if it was an ICBM site. Coastal location like this ... it's gotta be a polar launch site. And, no, we haven't see the rocket yet." He pointed to the largest structure on the screen. "Whatever it is, my guess is that they've got it hangared in the VAB, but they still haven't rolled it out yet. Could be anything, I suppose ... but it sure as hell isn't an ICBM." 132 ALLEN STEELE Parnell nodded. An ICBM would have been hidden in underground silo, which in turn could have been conceal with a camouflage tent. A facility of this size indicated much larger rocket. "A satellite launcher?" Laughlin shrugged. "Probably. . . but it could be anythi Even a spaceplane, for that matter." Parnell opened his mouth to object, then thought better it. Space technology was no longer the private domain of superpowers. In fact, it was probably easier to build a rn rated rocket than it was to construct an atomic bomb. Ev before the Soviet Union had collapsed, their rocket scientis had been quietly defecting both East and West, following t demise of the Russian space program after the Ares expe tion. If the European Space Agency could benefit from the i flux of disgruntled Russians, why not North Korea? "I take it our guys know about this already," he said. "CIA? Sure. How could they miss it?" Laughlin had alrea picked up the whiskey bottle and poured himself ano shot; he silently offered it to his friend, but Parnell shoot, head. "We've been watching this day after day for five niont now," he continued, carrying his glass back to the screen. first we thought we had stumbled upon something, so opened a secure line to McLean and blew the whistle. Pr soon, someone from NPIC phoned back and told us to p zipper on it. Turns out they'd known about it a month be we did." Parnell nodded. NPIC was the National Photographic pretation Center, the section of the CIA's Science and nology Directorate responsible for analyzing data receiv from the agency's reconnaissance satellites. "But, of cours they wouldn't tell you exactly what it is," he surmised. "Of course not." Laughlin leaned against the console. nobody else is going to know, I reckon, until the State Dep ment figures out exactly how to handle this mess." The image was already drifting off the top edge of screen, disappearing from sight as the telescope passed ove the Sea of Japan. Laughlin continued to gaze thoughtfully a the screen. "Remember the Treaty of Versailles, and how th Germans got out from under it by starting the V-2 progra THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 133 and later the Amerika Bomber? Well, it looks like history's repeating itself. We finally got Kim Jong to agree to U.N. in- spections of his nuclear facilities, but we forgot to rule out the possibility of-quote unquote-peaceful space research. So now North Korea's in the process of launching their own weather satellite, or whatever the hell they want to call it." "And nobody can touch them." Laughlin smiled grimly and nodded his head. "I don't think anyone wants to go public with this. A launch site seven hun- dred miles from Japan ... no, we're going to keep this quiet for a while longer. At least until someone finds out what the weather satellite looks like." Parnell continued to gaze at the screen long after the tele- scope began to pass over South Korea. The Russians might be long out of the space race and the Americans quickly follow- ing suit, but this wasn't preventing the rest of the world from edging into the game. It was bad enough that the Europeans were taking the lead in space, with the Japanese not far be- hind; at least they were trading partners and military allies, and as such, their objectives could be anticipated as genuinely benign, although hardly beneficial to America's technological and economic future. Germany wasn't going to restart World War 11 because it was purchasing Tranquillity Base. In ten to fifteen years, Koenig Selenen GmbH stood to make billions by selling electrical power to the United States, generated by the solar power satellites it intended to construct in high orbit from. lunar materials, just as France had already captured more than half of the commercial launch-services market by send- ing communications satellites into orbit less expensively than NASA. But even if North Korea's first orbital rocket contained nothing more sinister than a cheap knockoff of an obsolete American weather sat, it would have proved they were capa- ble of lofting a payload into low orbit. And if North Korea had their hands on space technology, South Korea would have to get it, too. In turn, China would accelerate development of their Long March missiles; when that happened, the Middle East nations would get into the game. Libya, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel ... and so on down the line, 134 ALLEN STEELE until the night sky was filled with real or bogus weathe communications satellites. And meanwhile the United States-one-time world I now suffering from premature senescence, mumbling to as it played one endless Sega game after another whil tending that its undisputed position as the numero uno g exporter of exercise videos actually meant somethin headlong toward the inevitable rude awakening. Whether or not this was the future Laughlin had int( to show him, the glimpse Parnell had caught was enou chill him to the bone. He picked up his glass and turned to Old Joe. "I think I that drink now," he said. Uwe Aachener and Markus Talsbach sat next to each on the bunk in Aachener's cabin, assembling the tools of trade. When they returned to the VIP section after dinner, bach had gone straight to his cabin and retrieved his e ment from its hiding place inside his duffel bag. Tucki inside a folded towel, he had undressed, pulled on a robe the locker, gathered his toiletry kit and waited exactly minutes by the door, carefully listening for sounds fro corridor. When he was certain the corridor was empt switched off the light, slipped out the door, and qui walked the seven paces it took to reach Aachener's cab anyone had seen him, he would have once again pretende to understand English quite as well as he actually did, claimed that he was taking a late-night bath. No one had observed him, though, and Aachener was ing for him. Once Markus was safely inside the cabin, had thrust a pillow against the bottom of the door to b the light; then, without saying more than was absolutely essary, the two men went to work. The guns they had smuggled aboard the Domberger both lightweight Glock 17's, all-plastic automatics which been purchased on the European black market and shipp French Guiana through a series of cutouts supplied by o the South American drug cartels. The guns had been t THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 135 into space disassembled, the parts hidden within various arti- cles 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 cre- dence 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, assem- bling, 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 as- signment; 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 as- sistance. 136 ALLEN STEELE Fortunately, Dooley wasn't their leader. That was some( else entirely. Talsbach took some comfort in that fact as glanced at his watch. It was almost 2300 hours, and the pers they awaited was scheduled to arrive at any minute.... Footsteps approached from down the corridor. Markus a Uwe glanced at one another, then laid their guns on the b dropping towels and pillows over them. The footsteps stopped outside their door. There was a d ble-rap on the door, a short pause, then a single knock. M kus looked at Uwe and nodded his head; Aachener stood 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 udience, 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 Zador-a ... (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 bond plays on 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 ... ? ,Xhiller: No, no ... it is okay to call me Karl, thank you ... Boone: How about Colonel Karl? aughter) Schiller: Karl is okay, thank you ... Boone: Anyway, Karl, I understand you're soon going to be flying West 's first privately developed spaceship into orbit, the ... uh ... ,jerrnany I Schiller: The Sanger XS- 1, yes, Roy. It's an experimental ... Boone: The XS- I? 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? . 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, M~ke ... yeah, there it is ... and, gee, it looks kind of puny to me, . . explore outer 138 ALLEN STEELE Karl. Not much compared to an Atlas. Kind of a shrimp-ship, if you me. (Laughter) Moose: A shrimp-ship! Yes! Schiller: Yes, it is rather small, if you should compare it to an Atlas but that is the point, correct? A smaller spacecraft, we believe, achieve much the same goals as an Atlas-C, but with less time to prep 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 protot) 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 Mo 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, a 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 conduct experiments in ... ah, how do you say? ... new theories of aerob maneuvers, so ... Boone: How about beer? Maybe some schnitzel? (Laughter) Schiller: No, I think not. The XS- I is configured to take advantage newly developed ... Boone: Yeah, I see. Very interesting. So what does your country inte to do with this schnitzel-ship ... excuse me, spaceship? Schiller: AN I'm pleased you asked! The European Space Agency lieves we can open new commercial opportunities in space . . . ..-- building solar power satellites, perhaps, or mining the Moon for valu substances ... if we can lower the costs of launching spacecraft into o 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. C. an re THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 139 (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-hungal 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 ... (Applouse as the studio bond strikes up the Star Wars theme; screen fodes to a still-shot of Moose wearing a space helmet pointed with the Late Show logo) E-L-E-V-E-N 2/16195 -2245 GMT oe Laughlin had told her to follow the noise to the rec room; it turned out he wasn't jok-.', ing. As she climbed down a ladder to the second deck of Sec-l' tion 14, Berkley Rhodes heard music reverberating through the narrow corridors: "Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra," by jimi Hendrix, as performed by the Los Angeles Symph lony Orchestra. just under it was the unmistakable porcelain c~a& of billiard balls striking one another, and voices: chord. " Goddamn, Billy! Anything but that!" Someone else laughed. "Just kidding ... okay, hold on." Rhodes hesitated, then gently pushed open the hatch and I I "Oh, Pr 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 wak' 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-' THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 141 peered inside. Several crewmen were hanging out in a narrow compartment which looked as if someone had made a consci- entious 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, sus- pended 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 bat- tered pool table that dominated the center of the room. An- other 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 re- poiters." 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 somc sleep before the flight tomorrow, so she'd let him go. Now she wished she had insisted ... She was ab(,ut to back out of the compartment when the 142 ALLEN STEELE crewman sitting at the computer spoke up. "Chill out, guy he said. "I picked her up from the ferry this afternoon." It was only then that she recognized him as Dr. Z, the pi of Harpers Ferry. He didn't seem much friendlier than the o ers, but neither was he openly hostile; at any rate, it wa small relief to spot a familiar face. "Doesn't mean shit, Doc." The man racking the balls to ù beer out of the fridge and opened it. "She's press. She wa ù story, she can go interview Old Joe. This is our place." "C'mon, Fred, you don't have to be an asshole all the ti You don't see her carrying a camera right now, do you?" Dr waved her into the room. "Want a beer, Ms. Rhodes?" Rhodes took a tentative step through the hatch. "Than Yeah, Id love a beer ... but I was told that wasn't allo here." Quiet laughter from the group, except for the two men the pool table. "Whoever told you that was a liar," the m on the couch said. He was the oldest one in the room; wire-rimmed glasses, a potbelly, iron-gray hair that nea reached his shoulders, and a four-day beard, he looked like aging hippie who had somehow panhandled his way i orbit. "You're looking at the last of the great space drinkers "Speak for yourself, Poppa . . ." "Hey, guys," Rhodes, insisted, "I'm not here to do a st about you. I'm off the clock. I just came to-" "Bullshit. Open your mouth in front of a reporter, tomo you read it in the paper." Fred stopped racking the ba picked up his stick, and dropped it in a stand near the "C'mon, Lou, let's get out of here. I gotta fifth of tequila wife sent me back at my bunk." "I hear ya." Lou placed his stick on the table and wal toward the hatch. "Who needs this shit? " Each of them cast cold glares at Berkley as they passed on their way out of the rec room. "Media slut," Fred mutt to her back before he slammed the hatch shut behind him. An uncomfortable silence descended upon the room. its about that, maam," Poppa said softly. "They've just been here too long and have forgotten their manners, that's all." looked at the kid who had been sorting through the C Ae -C THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 143 3, 1 ~ lot :h- a ~k its ke. .z ks Q at an Ith rly an ito )ry ,ed ler .-ed rry up He Ds. "Billy, give the lady a beer, please. And put something on that won't peel the paint off the walls." "I think it's peeling already," Billy murmured, but he slid a CD into the stereo. The first low-key riffs of "Black-Eyed Man" by the Cowboy junkies filtered from the beat-up speak- ers, as raw and mellow as a winter morning in eastern Ken- tucky. Billy looked as if he might have come from coal-mining country himself; mid-twenties, tough and stringy-looking, greasy black hair, and narrow sideburns stretching down his jaw. He reached into the fridge, pulled out an ice-cold can of Budweiser and silently handed it to her before slumping into a chair to watch Bruce Willis kill some bad guys. "I'm sorry I caused a problem," Rhodes said as she sat down next to Poppa and cracked open the beer. "I was told I could get a drink here, and ... well. . ." "Let me guess. You wanted to meet some people here, maybe see what we're like off-duty." The old man crushed the empty can in his hand and lobbed it toward a nearby waste can; it bounced off the wall and hit the floor, but he made no move to pick it up. "Your arrival wasn't exactly a surprise, ma'am. In fact, we sort of thought you'd show up sooner or later," "I wasn't . . . "Horseshit," he said slowly, smiling a little. "You're not the first journalist who's come calling, and you ain't gonna be the last." i Rhodes took a nervous sip from her beer. There was no point in denying it; Poppa had caught her in the middle of a lie. "Don't take it personal, miss," he continued, "but there's not a whole lot of sympathy for reporters among the people who work here. Ain't that right, Curtis?" Dr. Z didn't reply; he had already returned his attention to the computer screen. "Of course," Poppa went on, "Dr. Z and Billy are young turks, so they don't remember the old days. Now, take Bill here, Prinstance . . ." "Shut up, Poppa." Billy's right foot tapped the floor in time with the music; he didn't look away from the tube. "I've got enough trouble as is." Poppa ignored bim. "Billy's my co-pilot. We fly a satellite 144 ALLEN STEELE retriever, when we're not hanging out here. Now, Billy ... he spends six years in the Navy, flying air-sea rescue pers out of Jacksonville while getting some astronaut tra on the side, all 'cause he wants to be an astronaut wh grows UP." "Shut up, Poppa." Poppa paused to belch into his fist. " 'Scuse me . problem is, the program's going down the tubes by the he gets out. Kid wants to go to Mars, but he's lucky picking up busted American Comsats with me so we ca lem to the Japs." "You're salvaging dead satellites for NASA?" Rhodes a "No," Billy replied. "We're salvaging dead satellites fo "McGraw Orbital Services," the old man explained. mund McGraw, president and chief executive officer, at service." He winked at her. "NASA keeps us up here t rid of the low-orbit junk, and we make a few extra buc selling it to the Wogs and Krauts as scrap and spare parts He groaned as he heaved himself out of the couch to another beer out of the fridge. It wasn't hard to tell th was already drunk. "At any rate, it's a living. Sucks, but living." "Gravity sucks," Billy said, "but only by one-third ... "Old joke, Bill, andw'atch your mouth." Poppa McGra back into the couch as he opened his beer. He stretche his legs and motioned with his can toward Curtis Zi "And as for the right honorable Dr. Z over there. . . " Zimm only half -listened as Poppa McGraw droned on, ing Rhodes more than she probably cared to know of hi story. Not that he particularly minded. Ed McGraw was an timer whose service record aboard the Wheel went back't old Space Force days, and he always welcomed the opp nity to rehash his stories when anyone gave him half g ch Everyone aboard the Wheel had already heard them a times; pretty soon, Poppa would start telling Rhodes A glory days as the pilot of the retriever ship that had re voused with Ares One when it returned to Earth back i re p- 9 e ly ie be -11 d d- .le THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 145 'Rhodes, of course, would believe every word; so had Zimm, when he first came aboard Space Station One a year ago. Over a year ago, he reminded himself; fourteen months, two weeks, and three days, to be exact. Curtis Zimm had wanted to be an astronomer ever since his father had given him a small hobby telescope for Christmas when he was eleven years old. Although his family didn't have the money to send him through college, Zimm had par- tially solved the problem by enlisting in Air Force ROTC. The decision had caused him to lose a few friends among the Min- neapolis hard-rock crowd he'd been hanging out with, but it enabled him to go to CalTech to study radio astronomy. Given a choice between searching for black holes or watching an- other Prince-wannabe at a downtown club and pumping gas for the rest of his life, he chose black holes. Zimm had completed the requirements for his B.S. and M.S. in record time, but in his sixth year of college the federal tu- ition money began to run out. As a career prospect, radio as- tronomy is practically worthless unless one has earned a Ph.D., but since his ROTC funds had dried up and the Na- tional Science Foundation had turned down his grant applica- tion, it looked as if Zimm's academic term at CalTech would come to an end before he could complete his doctoral thesis on quantum singularities. As it turned out, his faculty advisor at CalTech had once been a major in the old U.S. Space Force and still had some connections at NASA. On behalf of his student, Professor Bea- son managed to swing a deal with the space agency: in ex- change for spending a year aboard the Wheel, during which time he would learn to fly Harpers Ferry, NASA would pay Zimm's tuition, as well as giving him preferred access to its low-orbit Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility. The last part of the arrangement was particularly sweet; although it was difficult for students to book time with the AXAF satellite, it was controlled from the Wheel, and therefore Zimm would be pushed to the head of the line every time he wanted to log an hour or two with the observatory. And in return, NASA had a new taxi pilot, just when the last one was quitting and going J4=10 146 ALLEN STEELE Zimm had jumped at the chance; if everything worked o he'd come out of the twelve months with a doctorate a enough real-world experience to land him a nice professio job at one of the better radio observatories. But everythi didn't work out. Ten months after he joined the Wheel's cr AXAF had gone on the fritz before he could complete his st ies of the Cygnus X-1 pulsar. The satellite's starboard so array had been nailed by a micrometeorite, causing the te scope to lose half of its internal electrical power. NASA didn't have the necessary funds to purchase a placement wing from Martin Marietta, and wouldn't until half a dozen congressional subcommittees deci whether the cost of maintaining AXAF was worth sacrifici some senator's favorite pork barrel. The last he had heard, t satellite was competing against a proposal to build a railro museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. So here he was: stranded aboard a broken-down space s tion, his doctoral thesis in limbo, his future prospects un tain. At this point, it was beginning to look as if his next j would be teaching Astronomy 101 at a junior college Duluth.... "Now, back in '77, things were different," Poppa was s ing. Tell me about it, Zimm thought. "I was running MR- ... Mars Retriever One-Three, and she's still my ship.. we had gone out to lunar orbit to pick up Ares when it c back, and ol' Neil ... that's Neil Armstrong, y'know . . . radioed in to say that he had lost power to the port engin and he was..." Poppa would soon get to the part in which he wo that if it weren't for him, Ares One would have shot past t rendezvous point and its crew would have been lost in t cold, fathomless reaches of outer space. It was the same bu shit story Curtis had heard a dozen times over. If it wasn't for on-line pals like Mr. Grid, he would gone nuts by now. OK, so let me get this straight, he typed as he tried to fo on keeping up his end of the conversation. The Duke came the Castle, but he wasn't interested in sex. Right? He had begun using Le Matrix shortly after he arriv Lt, id al ig IV, J_ ar n 3 d ~e e 0 THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 147 the Wheel, first as a way of communicating with the rest of the astronomy community, but later as simple escapism. He had first met Mr. Grid on the Lost In Space fan board, and since then she had become one of his closest friends on the net. She had some kinky interests, to be sure, but at least she didn't flame like many of the teenagers he had encountered on Le Matrix, nor did she sign off at the mention of an event horizon. When it turned out that her on-line boyfriend was supposed to be visiting the Wheel-indeed, that Thor200 was Paul Dooley, a crew member on the upcoming Conestoga mission to Tranquillity Base-he promised to meet Dooley when he got off the ferry from the Cape and pass a sly word that she was waiting for him this evening on Le Matrix. His private impression of Dooley was that he was as weird as a three- dollar bill. However, judging by the way she was talking to- night, he wasn't entirely certain Mr. Grid hadn't gone off the deep end herself. A long pause. The system was running slow, but that was to be expected. His downlink was being bounced across any number of Iridium Comsats, so it sometimes took more than a few seconds for their messages to be transceived between the Wheel's rec room and her small apartment in Phoenix, Arizona. Finally, the reply came: It wasn't just THAT, damn it! He didn't ID himself as the Duke either! He signed on as Thor and he thought the Duke was someone else! He shrugged. So he forgot he was supposed to be the Duke & signed on as Thor2OO instead. Where's the beef? "So why do they call you Poppa?" Rhodes asked. "'Cause I'm the poppa dog, Miss Rhodes. Like a retriever ... Fido's Pride, that's my ship, the MR-13. You'll see it to- morrow when Dr. Z runs you out to Conestoga. It's parked next to the garage. Gimme another beer, Billy." That's not all, Mr. Grid replied. I don't think he knew I was a woman. When I started to come on to him, he didn't know what to do at first, then he started to tell ME what I was sup- posed to be feeling!:( --Curtis picked up the Coke he'd been drinking, found it 148 ALLEN STEELE empty, and tossed it in the waste can. He looked a shaken when I picked him up at the ferry, Gaby. S flights can be rough sometimes. "In fact," Poppa continued, "we're going to be flying boat out tomorrow, right behind you guys. . "Really?" "That's the fact. We have to pick up Conestoga's dep tanks after y'all drop them. They usually let them go, bu Conestoga comes home, the Smithsonian wants to dis the whole thing and bring it back to Earth for storage Air and Space Museum annex in Maryland. So they wa whole ship, drop-tanks'n all." That's not all, Mr. Grid replied. He drank the nectar out realizing that it was blood. When I told him that come from a young boy I had captured and placed in th geon, he thought I was talking about having SEX with Curtis blinked as he read that. Well, OK, that's a little all right ... but he could have still been shaken up! "The entire ship?" Rhodes asked. "That's going to co to bring back to Earth." "Sure it is. Kind of a bitch, ain't it . . . 'scuse my Ian We've got enough money to dismantle the last moonsh make it a tourist attraction, but we can't pay to keep it tional. I mean, what's this country coming to?" I got suspicious, so I told him the Dane was calling from upstairs and I had to leave ... and he reacted as Dane was still alive!! BUT HE MURDERED THE D IOS. AGO! :0 Dr. Z nervously rubbed his hand across his shaved There was a lot about cybersex that he still didn't unde How two adults could achieve erotic satisfaction from i ing in on-line fantasies was still beyond his compreh for him, it was like trying to masturbate with a copy World. Nonetheless, his friendship with Mr. Grid was mate as if they were brother and sister sharing stories a rcal-world rendezvous with a secret lover; because of t knew a lot about the romance between Thor200 and ... or rather, under different screen-names, DukePa LadyG. a .e re t C. td le THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 149 At least once a week the Duke and LadyG had rendezvoused in a private room on Le Matrix, where they gradually collabo- rated in a romantic liaison that combined elements of various gothic horror novels they had both read. A bit of Bram Stoker, a dash of Anne Rice, some cable-TV reruns of Dark Shadows ... soon they had created a scenario in which Lady Gabrielle, a vampire of noble blood, had seduced Duke Paul and, after biting his neck and transforming him into her undead consort, had coerced him into murdering the Dane, her husband. Now they got together on Le Matrix to grope each other in the as- tle. They traditionally began each session by drinking the blood of fictional teenage boys LadyG had lured from the nearby village ... the "nectar," as she preferred to call it. All in all, it was safe sex, albeit taken to a cybernetic ex- treme. 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 pseud- onym 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 slichtest 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 reDlV came as quickly as cyberspace would Dermit. 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 dis- 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, ISO ALLEN STEELE claim to be someone else, and climb aboard the next roe Maybe someone managed to hack into Le Matrix and DukePaul's password. Billy switched CDs, changing the music from the Co junkies to Midnight Oil, while Poppa Dog continued to tall tales about the old days aboard the Wheel. I thought of that, Mr. Grid replied. I asked him if he aboard the Wheel, and he said yes. Also, there was a L pause last night while we were talking, when he was sti Florida ... and he was really short with me when he c back. ;/ That doesn't mean anything, Zimm typed, although he beginning to have his doubts. Le Matrix's double-key encryption system was virt foolproof when it came to foiling the so-called cypherp who specialized in such activity, to the point that it nearly impossible to gain access to another user's pass Unless Dooley had unwisely blabbed his Le Matrix pass to someone-which was unlikely, considering his own rep tion among hackers-then the only way someone could signed on as either Thor200 or DukePaul was for som to ... No. That was too weird. But was it? He recalled introducing himself to D when Constellation's passengers had climbed aboard Ha Ferry. Dooley had seemed confused, almost evasive, whe had mentioned Mr. Grid. And ever since his arrival aboar Wheel, Dooley had holed up in his cabin in the VIP secti There's something fishy going on, Mr. Grid said. I d know how ... but that's NOT Paul Dooley. Prove it, he typed. A short pause, then: I'll get back to you. Until then, AN EYE ON HIM!! OK, OK, I will. Zimm grinned, then added, if you're wr then you pay my bill next month! Deal! BRB! Nite!! A moment later, her logon disappeared from the top of screen, leaving him alone in the private room where they held their conversation. THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 151 Let ge; )Oy -.ell Tas IG in ne ly ks P 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 de- cided 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 crack- ing 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." Air, From The Washington Post; Januo 12, / 98 Reagan Set to Launch New Military Space Program News Analysis by Maureen McCoy WASHINGTON-Only a week before his inauguration, part of Presi- dent-elect Ronald Reagan's transition team is already planning a new Amer~ican space initiative. Although members of the group refuse to dis- close 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 Wori