178
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     In other words, Koenig Selenen intended to make Tra
    lity Base self-sufficient by forcing it to live off the land i
    of shipping from Earth everything needed for survi
    it worked-and there was no reason to believe that it
    wouldn't-the cost of space exploration would be greatly re-
    duced, and large-scale space colonization would become a real.
    is
                                         s4
                                         cl
                                          u
    possibility. Indeed, Koenig Selenen was already d ~ss.
    plans to use nuclear indigenous-fuel spacecraft to send a re-i
    turn mission to Mars, the asteroid belt, and even the outer,
    planets of the solar system.
     The sad irony of the NIF engine was that it had first been
    proposed in the mid-eighties by a team of researchers from the"
    Martin Marietta Corporation. Unfortunately, NASA's en-
    trenched bureaucracy had not paid much attention to the idea; 4
    it was also opposed by the antispace movement, whose knees
    jerked at the mere mention of the word "nuclear." Suffoc
    by redundant impact studies and railed at by technoph
    newspaper columnists, the NIF engine died in the United
    States. The project's key scientists quit Martin Marietta, left
    the U.S., and moved to Germany, where rhey were quickly
    hired by Koenig Selenen GmbH.         0
     Even more ironic was the fact that once NIF moonships en-
    tered service, one of their main jobs would be hauling high-
    level nuclear waste to the'Moon, where it would be stored
    inside the empty Minuteman II silos. This would please envi-
    ronmentalists concerned about the disposal of nuclear waste
    on Earth . . . but who had opposed a solution to the same
    problem because it involved using space technology. Of
    course, Koenig Selenen GmbH would profit handsomely from
    this enterprise as well.
     Now, as he sat across the galley table from Parnell, James
    Leamore had the twinkle in his eyes of a patient tortoise who
    has outraced a complacent, slumbering hare.
     "I'm sure you'll manage somehow," Gene said. He un-
    crossed his legs, swiveled the chair around, and pushed ' off
    from the table, taking his coffee with him. "If you'll excuse
    me, I need to return upstairs."
     On his way up the ladder, Gene paused on B-deck. The two
    German astronaut-trainees were bent over the plotting table,

    




    180
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    you've spent a lot of time trying to keep him out of jail.
    right? Funny how nobody questions your patriotism or
    you a security risk."
     Parnell felt his face grow warm. "That's not the same t
    Captain. . ."
     "It isn't?" Ryer impatiently swept the hair out of her
    She laced up the sneaker and reached for its mate. "It's
    private business, something that stays at home. Right?
    what I do stays at home, too. In fact, it had for almos
    years, until someone saw me kiss my wife in a bar. T
    became a security risk. . .
     "Cris ...
     "Yeah,okay ... you're right. Maybe we should just dro
    She nodded toward a nearby bunk while she laced the
    sneaker. "The TV queen is supposed to sleep over there
    think she'll mind? I mean, she's really not my type, bu
    never know about us queers ...
     "Cut it out!" he snapped.
     He heard Aachener and Talsbach abruptly go silen
    didn't have to look behind him to know that they were st
    in his direction. Parnell forced himself to calm do
    wouldn't do any good for him to blow up at Ryer now.
     "Look," he said, "let's go back to square one. We've g
    jobs to do. Regardless of everything else, that's the first
    ity. We can't go to the Moon and back snarling at each
    ... we're the guys in charge here. Got it?"
     Ryer was about to retort, then apparently reconsidere
    sighed, nervously flicking her hair away again; she didn'
    his way. "Yeah. Okay. Got it."
     "Good. So let's make a deal. You do your job, and I'l
    off your case."
     "Yeah, okay, Commander." She pulled the duffel bag
    and began to dig into it. "Whatever you say. . . Christ, w
    that cap?"
     Parnell felt his temper rising once more. She wasavo
    him again, and the silly-ass game was beginning to piss
    off. He reached forward to grab the duffel bag, intendi
    yank it aside so that she couldn't use it to escape the con
    tion.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE
    
    11
    is
    
    91
    
    r
    
    te
    it
    
    ir
    r-
    ,r
    
    le
    k
    
    y
    
    ,r
    
    0
    
     "And another thing," he said as his fist grasped the bag's
    nylon cord. "Cut the 'Commander' crap. My name's . . . "
     What happened next was the sort of accident that can only
    occur in free-fall. He didn't intend to spill the duffel's con-
    tents' but she wasn't holding it firmly enough; in the next
    instant, boots, rolled socks, a sweatshirt, underwear, a spare
    jumpsuit, a toilet kit, a computer diskette ... all practically
    exploded in midair, pulled outward by the force of his tug.
     "Goddammit!" she yelled, but she was redfaced and laugh-
    ing in spite of her anger as her personal belongings were made
    public. "Oh, shit, Parnell! Look what you've done!"
     "Jeez ... Cris, I'm sorry!" He heard the Germans laughing
    as he let go of his squeeze bulb and began grabbing for any-
    thing within reach.
     He managed to snag one of the boots, a pair of white silk
    undies-he tried not to look at them too hard-and a sweat-
    shirt before he spotted the computer diskette tumbling past
    his shoulder. He snatched it up and, out of curiosity, glanced
    at the handwritten label.
     "Tetris? " he said. "Hey, I love this. My daughter got me into
    it ... 1,
      "Gimme that!"
     Before he could react, Ryer dropped the clothes she'd re-
    trieved, flung herself across the six feet of space separating
    them, and grabbed the diskette out of his hand. "That's not
    for you!"
     For an instant, he saw terror in her eyes. "Hey, whoa," he
    said, surprised by her expression. "Easy does it. I'm just sur-
    prised you brought a game with you, that's all." He cocked his
    head toward the nearby computers. "If you've got a minute,
    let's load it up and ...
      "No," Ryer said. "Let's not."
     She unzipped a hip pocket of her jumpsuit, shoved the disk-
    ette inside, and zipped the pocket closed again before she
    forced a smile on her face. "C'mon, Gene," she said. "Help
    me get all this stuff. We've got the second-post bum to do in a
    few minutes."
     "Uh ... yeah. Sure." Parnell handed her the armful of cloth-
    ine he had alreadv collected. then went to retrieve the toilet
    
    I I

    




    182
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    ki, which was spiraling end-over-end toward the other side
    the deck. No problem with him getting a good, close look
    her panties, but let him touch a knock-off copy of an arca
    
    game ...
     Damn, but she was a strange woman

    




    of
    at
    ide
    
    i
    
    From The Associated Press (national wire); January 25, 1985
    
     WASH IN GTO N-President Ronald Reagan today ordered that the
    remaining NASA space shuttle, Discovery, be temporarily grounded, fol-
    lowing last Tuesday's explosion of the shuttle Chollenger. ,
     The order was made public by White House spokesman Larry Speaks,
    in a brief statement issued to the press, "Until we know exactly what
    destroyed Cholienger, we cannot allow Discovery to remain in service,"
    Speaks said.
     The Executive Order follows preliminary reports by NASA accident
    investigators which indicate that Chollenger was destroyed by a malfunc-
    tioning solid-rocket booster. Although Navy divers are still probing the
    wreckage of the shuttle off the Florida coast, analysis of film footage of
    its launch shows that flames erupted from part of the right SRB seconds
    before the explosion occurred,
     The investigators theorize that the fire from the SRB might have
    burned through the shuttle's external fuel tank, thereby igniting its volatile
    hydrogen-oxygen fuel.
     Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster, which occur-red during
    Challenger's third test-flight. Chol/enger was the first vehicle in NASA's
    new shuttle fleet. They were intended to eventually replace the Atlas-C
    space ferries, which have been in continuous use since 1965.
     NASA spokesman Hugh MacDonald said that the Atlas ferries will
    continue to be launched from Cape Canaveral. "It's an older class of
    vessel, but it has a superb safety record," MacDonald said. "For the time
    being, we will be using the Atlases as the main wori<horse for manned
    orbital operations, until Discovery is ludged to be completely reliable."
     However, Speaks left little room for Discovery to be returned to ser-
    vice any time soon. "Until key safety issues are resolved, the President
    believes that we must act prudently to prevent a recurrence of this trag-
    edy," he said.

    




    F-O-U-R-T-E-E-N
    
    2/17/9S - 1407 GMT
    
    I
                         here were a fleeting few sec-
    onds after he pushed open the outer airlock hatch and before
    he attached the tether of his suit's lifeline to the catwalk rail-
    ing, when Parnell felt an old, atavistic fear.
     Oh my God, I'm falling ...
     And indeed, so he was. But so was Conestoga itself, and
    even if by some strange accident he was cast away from the
    moonship, he would fall with the vessel. If such a thing were
    to occur, it would be embarrassing, because someone might
    have to suit up and come outside to haul him back in, but
    hardly fatal ... so long as the lifeline held.
     Yet, in those few seconds, common sense and experience
    did little to ease his nerves. Even though it had been half a
    lifetime since he'd taken his first spacewalk, and only a few
    hours since he made the short jaunt between Harpers Ferry
    and the moonship, this was different, because back there he
    was still in Earth orbit, while here ...
     Blackness. Utter starless void. A pit as deep as the universe
    itself, vast as all eternity.
     And he still hadn't attached the tether ...
     Parnell remembered when he had taken Gene Jr. on a camp-
    ing trip to Canyonlands National Park, one of the last times
    he and the boy had been close enough to share a holiday. For

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    185
    
    three days they hiked through the Utah desert, sleeping in
    canyons and atop mesas, following trail markers and his map
    until they reached their destination, the confluence of the
    Colorado and Green Rivers. For three days they walked, sang
    Boy Scout campfire songs and Creedence Clearwater Revival
    hits, took snapshots of the Needles and Druid Arch, com-
    plained about boot blisters, sipped canteen water and dined on
    trail mix, and walked some more until, almost unexpectedly,
    they reached a place where the ground fell away and they
    found themselves staring into a primitive canyon with rock
    walls like the prows of enormous petrified battleships and the
    Y-shaped confluence so far below, it seemed as if they were in
    an airplane.
     They had stood there, the toes of their hiking boots at the
    verge of the drop-off, soaking in the scenery, listening to the
    wind as it whispered through the enormous gorge ... and then
    Gene Jr. did something only a goddamn fifteen-year-old would
    think of.
     He grabbed his father's shoulders and shouted, "Hey, don't
    jump.
     In that instant, Gene's knees had turned to butter, his arms
    flailed helplessly at the dry air, and a soundless scream threat-
    ened to emerge from his parched throat, because he imagined
    his feet losing contact with the dry crumbling soil, falling for-
    ward, plummeting thousands of feet down, down, down into
    the gaping abyss below.
     It was one of the scariest moments of his life.
     It had also been the first, last, and only time he had ever
    struck one of his kids. He lost his temper and gave the boy a
    slap. A glancing swat off the top of the head, not a solid punch
    to be sure ... but Gene Jr. had never forgotten it, nor com-
    pletely forgiven him. The following day they trudged out of
    the desert without saying much to each other, and it was only
    a few months later when Judith found a couple of joints hid-
    den underneath a Captain America comic book in the boy's
    bedside table drawer.
     Hey, Gene? You copy? Lewitt's voice was crisp and clear
    within his helmet.
     Hell with it. "I'm here. just taking in the view." Parnell

    




    186
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    reached forward, clamped the tether to the railing and ga-%
    the line a swift, hard tug to make sure it was secure. -"Oka
    I'm on the catwalk," he added.
     We gotcha. Lewitt chuckled. Don't fall off now.
     Coincidence. Jay was only joking. Gene had never told an
    one, not even Judith, about the incident in Canyonlands.
     He swallowed, gave the line another perfunctory tug, the
    pushed himself off the catwalk. "I won't," he murmure
    "Going out to check the antenna now."
     He had originally intended to let the failure of the Ion
    range radar system go unattended until they reached t
    Moon. It was nonessential equipment, after all, at least as f
    as their mission was concerned; it was there mainly to tra(
    other vessels in cislunar space. Conestoga could easily ma
    touchdown at Tranquillity Base without it, using the shor
    range dish alone for the approach and final descent. Yet h
    conscience had continued to bother him until, sometime du
    ing lunch, he announced his intent to go EVA and fix t
    damn thing once and for all.
     Both Jay and Cris had argued with him, each maintaini
    that a spacewalk wasn't necessary and that they could hand
    the landing maneuvers without the LRR. Perhaps they coul
    but the fact of the matter was that Gene wanted a reason
    leave the vessel for a fewminutes. The tortured syntax of t
    Germans, Leamore's remarks about obsolete American spa
    technology, Dooley's inability to eat without throwing fo
    all over the place, Rhodes and Bromleigh wanting to videota
    everything short of his visit to the head ... altogether, h
    passengers made him need to escape the ship for a few mi
    utes. Get a breath of fresh air, as it were, although he reckon
    that if someone had so much as farted, he would have tak
    it as a good excuse to check the oxygen tanks.
     So now he was alone, and what good had it done him? Ju
    given him the time to confront old memories, and bad ones
    that.
     Parnell pushed it all to the back of his mind. Letting t
    lifeline trail behind him, he pulled himself hand over ha
    along the railing until he reached the outrigger spar leading
    the radar mast. His helmet lamp traced the long I-beam un

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE     187
    
    it ended at the pair of silver dish-shaped radar antennas at its
    end.
     "Going out on the starboard mast now," he said.
     We copy, Lewitt replied. Good luck.
     Easy now. One hand over the other. A rookie in the water
    tanks at Houston could do this. The LRR dish was the closer
    one of the pair, only fifteen feet away.
     Once he was out from under the hemispherical bulge of the
    personnel sphere, he could have looked straight up and seen
    the Moon, but he didn't allow himself that privilege. It was
    too distracting. Instead, he concentrated on the beam, ab-
    sently humming to himself until he realized that he was doing
    the refrain from "Susie Q- one of the CCR songs he and Gene
    Jr. had sung during the Utah trip. He stopped himself. Now
    was no time to be woolgathering, for chrissakes . .
     When he reached the dish, he checked it first. It was still
    intact, so he moved to the silver Mylar-wrapped instrument
    module mounted behind it. "Nothing seems to be wrong
    here," he said, gently jostling both the antenna and module.
    "No sign of micrometeor impact. Looks good as new."
     Ummm ... copy that, Gene. Lewitt's voice sounded dis-
    tracted. I'm still not getting anything here, though.
     "Nothing?"
     Not even a twitch. Flatline all the way. Jay paused. Maybe
    the module connection is bad. Try it again.
     The instrument module was about the size of a shoebox,
    attached to the antenna by a single long bolt through its cen-
    ter. Parnell slipped a torqueless screwdriver from his utility
    belt and used it to unfasten the bolt. He caught the bolt with
    his right hand before it could drift away, then gently pulled off
    the module and turned it over in his thick gloves. The eight-
    prong connection appeared to be undamaged, and he told Lew-
    itt so.
     Might be a hardware failure, Lewitt said. Why don't you
     bring it in for a test? If it's screwed up, maybe I can run a
     bypass.
     "Yeah. Sounds like a good idea." Parnell opened a cargo
     pocket on his thigh and slipped both the module and the re-
    
    r-
    
    e
    
   st
    at

    




    ALLEN STEELE
    
    taining bolt into it. "Okay, I'm coming back in. Have some
    hot chocolate waiting for me."
     Roger that. We'll keep the porch light on.
     Clumsily turning around, Parnell began to make his way
    back down the spar, his hands gripping the I-beam for support.
     Halfway down the beam, though, his extended left leg be-
    came tangled in a dangling loop of the lifeline. Cursing under
    his breath, he reached down with his right hand to pull the
    line free. This caused his left hand to slip from the girder, and
    for a few moments he was drifting free of the spar.
     He almost called out, but caught himself. He wasn't in trou-
    ble, and he didn't want to sound like a panicky rookie on his
    first EVA. just the type of thing Rhodes would love to put in
    her next dispatch. He could almost hear it now: "A moment
    of peril today aboard the U.S.S. Conestoga, when mission
    commander Eugene Parnell, during a routine spacewalk to fix
    a radar dish, was nearly lost when he. . ." and so forth.
     Instead, he quickly reached up with his right hand to grab
    the beam again. As he did, his fingers happened to slip within
    a slender electrical cable attached to the beam itself.
     To his surprise, the cable was loose; the slightest pull of his
    forefinger yanked it several inches from the brackets that held
    it to the beam.
     He managed to catch the beam itself with his left hand,
    while he stared at the loose cable. Twisting his body until he
    could clearly look through his helmet faceplate, he saw that
    the cable led straight to the LRR antenna.
     This was the electrical conduit leading to the radar antenna,
    and it should have been snugly fitted against the spar.
     Having some problems out there? Lewitt asked.
     Parnell glanced up at the personnel sphere looming above
    him. A few people were watching him through the portholes,
    more than likely, while listening to the exchange through
    headsets or intercom speakers. On the other hand, thoy
    wouldn't be able to see him clearly, because the spar itself w~s
    in their way.
     "Nothing to worry about," he replied, keeping his voice
    even. "Just checking on something."
     Hand over hand, he moved the rest of the way back down

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE     189
    
    the spar, following the slender tapeworm with his helmet
    lamp as it snaked its way to the hull of the personnel sphere.
    Once he was on the catwalk again, he continued to trace the
    cable as it led beneath the catwalk, then up again to a small
    service panel about five feet from the airlock hatch. When he
    reached its end, he involuntarily sucked in his breath.
     The cable was dangling free of the panel, its end floating a
    few inches from the junction box.
     Certainly this would have been noticed by someone at the
    hangar while Conestoga was being prepared for launch. If an
    astronaut had accidentally pulled the cable loose, then either
    he would have fixed it on the spot, or a last-minute inspection
    of the moonship would have uncovered the problem.
     No. It looked as if someone had deliberately pulled the cable
    loose from the junction box just prior to launch.
     Yet, save for a couple of Wheel technicians who had briefly
    been inside Conestoga, the last people to come aboard the
    moonship had been its own crew and passengers.
     It would have been easy for any one of them to reach over
    and give the cable a good, hard yank ...
     Gene? You copy? What's going on out there?
     Parnell almost said something, but once again he checked
    himself. Too many people could be listening to this conversa-
    tion. Besides, what he was thinking was absurd.
     Why would anyone want to knock out the LRR? It didn't
    make sense.
     "Nothing, Jay," he said. "Just looking at the Moon, that's
    all."
     Nonetheless, as he spoke, he pulled the screwdriver from
    his belt again and opened the service panel. "Nice night for a
    spacewalk," he continued, trying to sound breezy as he
    quickly stretched the cable back to the panel and used the
    screwdriver to carefully reattach its bare end to the junction
    pole. "Moon sort of looks like ... y'know ... the way I saw it
    from the Beach House the other night."
     just a lot closer, right?
     "Right." With the conduit now firmly back in place, he
    closed the panel and slipped the screwdriver back in his belt.

    




    ALLEN STEELE
    
    "Okay, I'm coming back in now. Hope you Ive got that hot
    chocolate ready for me."
     What, is it cold out there on the beach?
     Parnell pushed himself toward the open airlock hatch. "You
    could say that, yeah."
    
     As he expected, there was nothing wrong with the LRR
    module.
     Lewitt taped it down to the old map table on B-deck, opened
    its case, and hooked it up to a computer diagnostics kit. Most
    of the crew members and passengers hovered or sat around
    and watched as he and Parnell pushed and prodded at it with
    electrodes and tweezers while consulting a loose-leaf service
    manual. Bromleigh caught the whole thing on videotape, of
    course; Rhodes said it looked like a scene from some old B
    movie Roger Corman once did, and when Dooley asked her if
    it was the same one where the spaceship computer goes in-
    sane and starts killing the crew, everyone laughed except for
    the Germans, who apparently weren't into film trivia.
     The unit came up aces, which was just as well, since there
    were no spares aboard. In the old days there might have been
    one, but these weren't the old days. So the next, obvious step
    was to put the module back in place and see what happened.
     Gene didn't tell anyone about the loose electrical cable. He
    tried to convince himself that he was keeping his mouth shut
    because he didn't want Rhodes and Bromleigh to get wind of
    what he'd found, that he didn't want NASA to suffer embar-
    rassment for avoidable hardware failure during the last Ameri-
    can mission to the Moon. But the truth of the matter was, he
    harbored suspicions that he didn't want to admit to himself,
    let alone to anyone else.
     So he sipped at his hot chocolate and waited for the next
    shoe to drop.
     He had gone EVA twice already that day, counting the
    spacewalk he had made from the ferry to the moons4ip.
    Therefore it was someone else's turn to go out on the spar and
    put the LRR unit back in place.
     Jay volunteered for the job, and so did Uwe Aachener, but
    Cris insisted on doing the dirty work, pointing out that as

    




    u
    
    it
    ~d
    
    ,ke
    Df
    t
    if
    
    r
    
    ~e
    
    at
    
    "You lost the unit?" Lewitt snapped.
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE     191
    
    flight engineer, Lewitt needed to remain on A-deck to monitor
    the systems in case there was another failure, and Aachener
    didn't know quite enough about Conestoga to be qualified for
    the assignment.
     Her reasoning was inarguable. Within a couple of hours she
    was on D-deck, suiting up for EVA with the assistance of Hans
    and Franz. Leamore floated nearby, watching the procedure
    and clucking about the "terrible shape of American technol-
    ogy." Parnell personally carried the LRR module down from
    the logistics deck, having already made sure that no one else
    placed their hands on the unit after he and Jay had completed
    their inspection. Only when Ryer was completely suited up
    and had climbed into the airlock did he hand the module to
    her.
     Aachener shut the inner hatch above her. Through the air-
    lock window, Parnell watched her carefully store the module
    and its retaining bolt in the same leg pocket he had used only
    three hours ago. She gave the thumbs-up; then Jay decom-
    pressed the chamber and opened the outer hatch.
     It should be a cinch. if the unit was successfully put back
    in place, then the long-range radar would be operational once
    again, since Parnell had secretly repaired the real cause of the
    problem. it was that easy, and no one had to be any the wiser.
     A few minutes later, Parnell sat in his couch on A-deck,
    silently listening while Ryer repeated his journey across the
    catwalk and down the radar spar. When she'd made it all the
    way out to the LRR antenna, she unsealed the pocket and
    pulled out the module. She was withdrawing the restraining
    bolt when her, voice suddenly rose.
      Oh, shit!
      Lewitt leaned forward in his seat. "What's going on?"
      It's ... goddammitl
      Parnell clicked the vox switch. "What's happening, Cris?"
      Fuck! It just slipped, I ...
      "Just tell me what's going on," he said.
      A deep sigh came over the comlink, then: I lost the module,
     Gene. I was trying to get the bolt out of my pocket and I ...
    
    a

    




    192 ~
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     Hell, yes! I let it go for just a second while I was pulling
    this ... aw, damn!
     "Can you still grab it?" Parnell asked. "Can you retrieve the
    module? "
     A longer pause. Static over the comlink. No can do. It's
    gone, out of reach ... Christ, Gene, I was just trying to get the
    bolt out of my pocket when it slipped from my hand and ...
     "You lost the unit?" Lewitt repeated. He let out his breath.
    "Is it out of reach?"
     What did I just tell you? Her voice was harsh, then in-
    stantly apologetic. I'm sorry, fay. Can't help it. Another pause.
    Sorry, guys, but I screwed up big-time. That thing's on its way
    to Mars.
     Gene closed his eyes for a moment. "Don't sweat it, Cris.
    It's not that important. just reel yourself back in. First cup of
    hot chocolate is on me."
     Yeah, I copy. Another pause. Hell with hot chocolate. Any-
    one smuggle any booze aboard this boat?
     "I'll try to find some," Parnell said, then clicked off.
     It could have been an accident that the electrical cable had
    been pulled free in the first place. It certainly sounded as if
    another accident had just occurred as Ryer lost the LRR unit
    during spacewalk. And it wasn't as if the long-range radar sys-
    tem was vital hardware to Conestoga's mission. If someone
    wanted to deliberately sabotage this flight, there were plenty
    of Criticality One components from which to choose.
     still ...
     Parnell unbuckled his seat belt, and pushed out of
    couch. The lady would want a squeeze bulb of hot chocol
    after spending an hour in an ice-cold spacesuit, her desire
    something stiffer notwithstanding.
     Yet, even as he pulled himself toward the ladder, he remem-
    bered Gene Jr.'s voice as he grabbed his old man's shoulders,'
    when he was standing at the edge of a bottomless pit.
     Hey, don't jump ...

    




    From TV Guide; October 30, 1987
    
                                 Critic's Notebook:
                           It Still Ain't Logical, Cap'n
                                  By Oral Fletcher
    
    Star Trek, The New Generation (Syndicated).
     Although it was a top-rated show for eight seasons between 1958 and
    1966, not many people today recall the original Star Trek. In its time, Irwin
    Allen's NBC adventure series inspired great loyalty among its viewers,
    mainly because of its heroic (if somewhat melodramatic) depiction of
    near-future space exploration just when the public was fascinated with
    the reaklife exploits of the U.S. Space Force. Legions of children came of
    age following the orbital derring-do of USSF Capt. Jimmy Kirk (William
    Shatner) and his wise-cracking scientist sidekick, Dr. Arnold Spock (Leo-
    nard Nimoy, now better known as the Oscar-winning director of The
    Good Mother).
     But that was a generation ago, and today the only devotees of Star
    Trek are the tiny cadre of sci-fi fans who have memorized Dr. Spock's
    favorite line, "it just ain't logical, Cap'n." So it comes as a surprise that a
    spin-off series, Star Trek: The New Generation, is being syndicated in the
    U.S. and Canada, particularly in an era when the American public has
    become disenchanted with space travel.
      The creator and producer of the new series, Gene Roddenberry
    (The Lieutenant) seems mindful of this. Instead of doing a remake of the
    original show, the new Star Trek takes place three centuries in the future;
    ristead of a USSF space station above Earth, its all-new cast travels the
    galaxy in a giant starship, the U,S,S. Enterprise. They include Capt. Jean-
    Luc Picard (Anthony Quinn), first officer Ryker (Steven Seagal), an emo-
    tionless android (Rob Morrow), and a telepathic counselor (Susan Sar-an-
    don), all of whom wear futu6stic one-piece Spandex jumpsuits.
     Their allies and adversaries include a mixed bag of aliens in heavy
    makeup. These include benign Klingons, treacherous Vulcans, comic-relief
    Romulans, and in the two-hour pilot episode, a mysterious, omniscient
    entity called "Q" (Robin Williams) who puts humanity on trial for real or
    imagined criimes until finally outwitted by Picard and his teammates.
     It's an ambitious start, particularly since very few sci-fi TV shows have
    attempted to depict life so far in the future, let alone realistically. The

    




    194
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    press kit proudly claims that scripts are checked by NASA scientists in
    order to ensure scientific accuracy, and several of these teleplays have
    been written by leading science fiction authors, including Harlan Ellison,
    David Gerrold, Norman Spirrad, and Salman Rushdie. The result is re-
    freshingly adult scenarios; most notable is the third episode, "The Satanic
    Verses," in which Picard confronts religious fanatics on a colony world
    who are bent on stamping out the last vestiges of creativity among its
    inhabitants.
     Despite such careful attention to details, the new Star Trek is hampered
    by its low-budget special effects. The sets are obviously made of papier-
    mdch6 and wood; props are repainted kitchen utensils, and even the
    Enterprise itself is suspended against a painted backdrop by half-visible
    fishing line, Compared to the sophisticated computer FX work pioneered
    by Japan's Toho Studios for its Godzilla movies, Star Trek: The New Gener-
    cition is primitive indeed.
     Less obvious, but nonetheless more indicting, is the show's naivet6,
    Star Trek: The New Generation portrays a future in which humankind has
    left Earth and gone to the stars, coexisting in one way or another with all
    forms of alien life. It's a sweet bit of sentimentality that will doubtless be
    applauded by diehard "trekkies," but hardly realistic; the Enterprise is little
    more than Aladdin's magic carpet with "dilithium warp drive." At least
    the old Star Trek had enough sense to confine its adventures to the Moon
    and Mars, and the events of the last two decades have shown them to
    be false, not final, frontiers. A few years after cancellation of the original
    series, its gung-ho attitude was effectively lampooned by Lost In Space,
    the Emmy-winning sitcorn that more viewers will probably remember
    than the series it satirized.
     However, if you enjoy this sort of thing, Star Trek: The New Generation
    is uplifting fantasy, whose thought-provoking scripts more than compen-
    sate for the cheesy effects. Seen as such, the show is a winner, worth
    watching if your local independent station happens to carry it.
     Catch it while you can, though. It's dragging the bottom of the Nielsen
    ratings, and probably won't last more than a season. And that ain't logical,
    Cap'n.

    




    F - I - F - T - E - E - N
    
    2/18/95 - 23 17 GMT
    
                         t's nearly midnight by the
    ship's chronometer and all is quiet. Down in C- and B-decks,
    the passengers and most of the flight crew are strapped into
    their bunks, sleeping until the wake-up call at 0500. The
    decks are darkened, but moonlight shines through the port-
    holes, eerily illuminating the long shadows of the slumbering
    forms; unencumbered by gravity, their hands drift above their
    chests, making them look like sleepwalkers who have been
    pinned down against their will.
     Aside from the occasional digital beep from the computers
    on B-deck, the only sound is soft music that filters down the
    gangway shaft from A-deck: cool jazz, Miles Davis's "Kind of
    Blue," a perfect sonata for fire watch.
     Gene Parnell lies in the astrogator's couch, peering at the
    stars through the telescope's binocular eyepiece. The shutters
    of the ceiling dome are irised open, allowing moonlight to il-
    lumine the command deck; he has clicked the lunar filters in
    place so he can spend a few hours studying the constellations
    before Jay Lewitt relieves him at 0200 Zulu. Two days out
    from Earth, Conestoga is nearly at the end of its long journey;
    tomorrow morning it will roll over, fire main engines to brake
    .,'Its outbound velocity and commence the direct descent to the
    -It lunar surface. For the first time since the mission began, Par-

    




    ME
    
    196
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    nell is completely alone, and he relishes the peace and quiet
    while he can still get it.
     Enjoying the moonlight, music, and rare solitude, he pans
    the telescope across the starscape, playing a solitary game of
    identifying constellations without consulting the star chart
    on the clipboard strapped to his leg. There, just to the right of
    Jupiter, is Libra; below it is Lupus. Scorpius is easy to find, but
    he has to cheat by checking the chart before he can name Ara.
     However, when he looks at the chart, he notices that Pluto
    should be in sight, not far from Ophiuchus. Now there's a
    challenge; Pluto is a dim object, difficult to locate even under
    the best of conditions. He reaches down to grasp the wheel
    which will turn the couch on its pedestal, when his headset
    buzzes.
     Startled by the sudden sound, for a moment he thinks it s
    someone down below trying to get his attention. Then he
    hears a faint voice:
     Conestoga, this is Space Station One ... Conestoga, this is
    Station One, Wheel Command. Do you copy? Over.
     He fumbles at the communications carrier on his belt until
    he finds the vox switch. "Urn, roger that, Wheel Command,
    this is Conestoga, Parnell speaking. We copy, over."
     Conestoga is now over 200,000 miles from Earth, so there's
    a four-second transmission lag: time enough for Parnell to
    wonder why the Wheel would be calling during a scheduled
    sleep period. Of course, they would know he'd be on duty at
    this hour-it's customary for the mission commander to take
    the fire watch-but the practice of hourly status checks be-
    tween en route moonships and the Wheel was retired years
    ago.
     Gene, this is Joe ... ah, we need you to switch to the KU-4
    band if you can, please, and prepare for a Code One transmis-
    sion. Do you copy? Over.
     Recognizing Joe Laughlin's voice, Parnell frowns. The KU-4
    band is a secure channel which can't be monitored outside
    A-deck, reserved only for emergency transmissions. Code One
    means that the RF scrambler is to be used, further safeguard.
    ing the privacy of the comlink; not only that, but if anyone
    else is on A-deck, he is supposed to get rid of them.

    




    t      IP
    
    the conversation.
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    197
    
     He flips the switch again. "Okay, Joe, I copy that. Next
    transmission will be on KU-4, Code One. Over."
     He unbuckles himself from the astrogator's station and
    pulls himself along the ceiling handrails until he reaches the
    pilot's couch on the far side of the deck. He considers shutting
    the gangway hatch, but decides against it; the noise might
    awaken someone below and raise uncomfortable questions he
    couldn't answer. Besides. the music ghmild mask his side of
    
     Parnell slides into Ryer's couch and hastily knots the seat
    belt around his stomach. He replugs his headset into the con-
    sole, then types the appropriate commands into the computer
    keyboard. A subaudible buzz through the headset tells him
    that he's on the right frequency and the scrambler is activated.
    "Wheel Command this is onestoga Parnell on ode One.
    
    Do you copy, over?"
    
    Laughlin's voice comes back on line: Gotcha, Gene. Are
    
    T7nU 171nnP2
    
     "All by my lonesome. A little paranoid tonight, aren't we?"
     It's meant as a joke, but Laughlin isn't in the mood. Look,
    Gene, I'm patching through one of my boys here, You met
    him a couple of days ago ... Curtis Zimm, the taxi driver
    who brought you guys over from Constellation and took you
    to Conestoga. He's got something to discuss with you.
     Parnell only vaguely remembers Zimm; it takes a moment
    before he matches the name with the skinhead kid he had
    encountered briefly aboard Harpers Ferry. Kind of a smartass,
    as he recalls. "Dr. Z, right," he says. "Jeez, Joe, is this impor-
    
    tant? I've got a ship to run here."
    
     A few seconds later, Dr. Z himself comes on-line. Com-
    mander~ This is Curtis Zimm. His voice is hesitant, uncer-
    tain. Umm ... I'm sorry to bother you like this, but I've
    
    learned something I think you should know about, and
    
    well, I know this is going to sound crazy. but when I told foe
    
    I   about it he said I should talk to vou at once and. .
    
    "Yeah, okay, son." Parnell rubs his closed eyelids with his
    
    fingertips. "Let's just hear it, okay?"
    
    He hears Zimm take a deep breath. I think someone on your
    
    ship is an imposter.

    




    198
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     it took a while to get the entire story out of Zimm. Initiall
    everything came out as a rushed, disjointed babble of name
    places, dates, and coincidences; Parnell had to stop him se
    eral times and get him to repeat something more slowly.
     At first, Parnell was incredulous. The idea that Paul Doole
    wasn't who he claimed to be was a bit hard to swallow; f
    almost laughed out loud when he heard about Mr. Grid ar
    the kinky computer-sex games she had been playing wit
    Dooley for several months. Yet Joe Laughlin seemed to be ta
    ing this seriously, and Joe wasn't the type to be gulled in
    believing nonsense. If Joe said that there might be somethi
    to Zimm's story, then Parnell had to give the kid the bene
    of the doubt.
     It wasn't until Dr. Z started giving him a blow-by-blow a
    count of the Le Matrix dialogue between Mr. Grid ar
    Thor200-or rather, between Dooley and a lonely you
    woman in Phoenix named Gabrielle Blumfield-and listed a
    the missed cues in their on-line conversation, that Parne
    began to have misgivings of his own about Dooley. As Zim
    spoke, Parnell recalled Dooley's erratic behavior over the pa
    three days; from the moment they had climbed aboard C
    stellation, when he couldn't fasten his couch harness witho
    assistance from the whiteroom techs, to dinner earlier th
    evening, when he had been unable to eat a simple meal wit
    out making a floating mess, Dooley had demonstrated clurns
    ness at every turn. More than once, Parnell had wondered
    Dooley had slept through his training sessions at Von Brau
    he couldn't even visit the head down on D-deck witho
    someone giving him instructions on how to properly use t
    zero-g toilet. If Parnell hadn't known better, he could hal
    sworn that Dooley hadn't been trained at all, but instead h
    tried to get by with reading old instruction manuals.
     And then there was the fact that Dooley had been keep
    to himself during the entire mission. Parnell had chosen
    overlook the young hacker's absence from the going-away di
    ner on the Wheel three nights ago, just as he had dismisse
    Dooley's tardy arrival at the Cape before the ferry launch. Y
    ever since Conestoga had left Earth orbit, Dooley had co

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE     199
    
    f
    
    ~9
    L
    :0
    
    !d
    et
    n-
    
    fined himself to his bunk on C-deck, where he either slept or
    watched an endless parade of videos on the VCR. He seldom
    went anywhere else in the personnel sphere; seemingly, there
    was no impulse to explore the mammoth spaceship. Not once
    had he visited A-deck, not even to send a personal message to
    someone on Earth.
     On reflection, Parnell realized that the overbearing young
    man he had briefly encountered at the Cape during mission
    rehearsals had subtly changed. Dooley had been a pain in the
    ass, to be sure; a few NASA trainers had wanted to smack the
    little son of a bitch just on general principles. But he had never
    been aloof, never been so repetitively clumsy ... and despite
    his arrogant dismissal of obsolete American space technology,
    he had nonetheless displayed curiosity about the mock-ups of
    the machines he would soon be riding into space.
     To be sure, this Paul Dooley had the same face, the same
    strident voice, the same tendency to accentuate everything
    he said with four-letter words. Nonetheless, now that it was
    pointed out to Parnell by a third party, there was a mile of
    difference between this Paul Dooley and that Paul Dooley.
     It was almost as if they were two different people entirely.
     And there's one more thing, Zimm said as he finished reit-
    erating the dialogue between LadyG and DukePaul. It may be
    nothing, but it really began to make us wonder, yknow, if...
     "Spell it out, son," Parnell said impatiently. The Miles
    Davis tape had long since ended, leaving a cold silence on the
    command deck. He glanced at the gangway ladder; no one had
    entered A-deck, but he wished he had closed the hatch. "Let's
    hear everything," he added, lowering his voice so that it
    wouldn't carry.
     Gaby. . . Mr. Grid, that is ... got curious about the long
    time-delay she had with Paul when they were on the net, the
    night before the launch, when he was staying at the motel.
    Remember how I told you about the pizza delivery, and how
    he seemed to take a while to get back on-line after he said
    the pizza boy had come?"
     There was a short pause. Well, sort of on impulse, today she
    signed onto CompuNet. That's another computer network,
    
    a

    




    200
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    see, and it carries the on-line edition of the Orlando Sentinel.
    That's the major daily paper in ...
     He knows the paper, Curtis, Joe interrupted. He lives in
    Florida, remember?
     Uh ... right. Sorry. Anyway, she scanned all the recent
    stories in the regional edition ... just a shot in the dark,
    y'know... and she found a small item on page ten.
     Parnell heard him take another deep breath. The story said
    that the body of a local kid, name of feff Norton, had been
    found yesterday in an orange grove on Indian River. He was
    shot in the back of the head. This kid had been reported miss-
    ing by his parents after he didn't come home from work last
    Wednesday night.
     Another pause. The paper said that he worked as a delivery
    boy at a pizza place on Satellite Beach. He hadn't been seen
    since he left to make a delivery at six-fifteen, and he never
    returned to the restaurant.
     Parnell felt his heart skip a beat.
     "Dooley was staying at a motel on Satellite Beach," he said,
    remembering small talk at the breakfast table in the Opera-
    tions and Checkout ready-room, the morning of the launch.
    "Does this lady remember when Dooley said his pizza was
    delivered?
     The response came a few seconds later. Le Matrix logged
    the time of her last chat with Dooley before the launch,
    Zimm said. She looked it up on her billing record. He talked
    to her between six-thirty and six-forty-one that evening, East-
    ern time. That's about the same time the Norton kid disap-
    peared ... and she says Dooley was real short with her when
    he came back on-line.
     They were both quiet for a minute. There were a lot of coin-
    cidences, to be sure ... yet somehow, Parnell didn't hear his
    bullshit detector ringing.
     His mind churned over the facts. A teenager disapp~ars
    from the same area where Dooley is staying the night before
    the ferry launch, on his way to deliver a pizza to Dooley. The
    pizza is delivered, but the kid's body later turns up in a grove
    in the general vicinity. A few hours later, Dooley appears at

    




    ~r
    
    . n-
    his
    
    I at
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    201
    
    the Cape ... but he doesn't act quite the same way, either to
    professional acquaintances or to his secret on-line lover.
     And this is the same person who has a pivotal role in the
    final disposal of six nuclear missiles on the Moon.
     Gene? You copy?
     Laughlin's voice broke his train of thought. "Roger that,
    Joe, " he replied. "I'm just trying to pull it together."
     By the way, I don't know if it means anything, but remem-
    ber that ... yknow, the thing I showed you the other night?
     It took him a moment to recall the secret launch site in
    North Korea. "Yeah, Joe, I remember. What about it?"
     Another four-second delay. I checked it out again today,
    when ISPY made another pass over the same area. No rocket,
    but there's a lot of scorch marks on the pad. Looks like some-
    thing might have lifted off while we weren't looking. And if
    it means anything to you, Poppa McGraw of MR One-Three
    reported spotting something that looked like a liftoff from
    that hemisphere, about the same time you jettisoned the
    DT's. We were at perigee when the event happened, so we
    couldn't see anything. Have you?
     "No, we haven't." On the other hand, Parnell reminded
    himself, they hadn't been looking. The long-range radar sys-
    tem was still down. "Who else knows about this?"
     There was a long delay. Parnell wondered whether Dr. Z
    was still in Main-Ops or if he had been dismissed from the
    deck. Probably the latter; Joe was nothing if not cautious
    about keeping military secrets.
     I've reported the launch and sighting to our friends in Vir-
     ginia, Laughlin said after a few seconds, but they haven't said
     boo about it. Your guess is as good as mine.
      Okay. So the Koreans had launched their first satellite. "It's
     probably nothing that you won't see in the papers tomorrow,"
     Parnell said. "What about the Dooley thing? Who knows
     about that?"
      No one else yet, Laughlin replied. We wanted to take it up
     with you flrst before anyone went screaming to the feds. I
     mean, it's all pretty goddamn bizarre, when you think about
     it. I wouldn't want the FBI to think we've lost our shit up
     here, know what I mean?

    




    202
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     Parnell nodded his head, forgetting for the moment that his
    friend couldn't see him. "Roger that, but I think you better
    take it up with Washington anyway. It looks pretty weird, all
    things considered. You copy?"
     A few more seconds of delay. The connection was getting
    scratchy as the Wheel traveled around the far side of Earth, its
    signal once again fuzzed despite satellite relays. Roger that,
    Gene. Look ... it may be nothing, but keep an eye on that
    guy of yours, okay? Let us know if anything's fishy. Over.
     "We copy, Wheel," Parnell said. "I'll take it under advise-
    ment. Conestoga over."
     Okay, pal. We'll keep you posted. Wheel Command over
    and out.
     Then Parnell was left with nothing but white noise. He
    switched off the radio, lay back in the couch, and reflected
    upon everything he had just been told.
    
     He was still thinking some two hours later when he heard
    someone coming up the ladder from belowdecks. Looking
    around, he saw Jay Lewitt float up the gangway shaft, bleary-
    eyed and clutching a squeeze bulb in his free hand.
     "Morning, skipper. Why's it so dark in here?" Lewitt found
    the dimmer switch next to the ladder and turned up the ceil-
    ing lights a few degrees. Parnell blinked in the sudden glare,
    and the flight engineer grinned at him. "You haven't been
    sleeping on watch, have you?"
     "Naw. Uh-uh." Parnell shook his head. "I was on the tele-
    scope for a while; then I got off and came over here." He didn't
    want to mention the conversation he'd just had with the
    Wheel. Not yet, at least. "How's everything below? Everyone
    still asleep?"
     "Like babies." Lewitt signed himself into the logbook next
    to the command couch, then glided over to the engineering
    station. 'Cept for the Germans, of course ... man, Hans and
    Franz sure snore loud.//
     Parnell smiled despite his worries. The nicknames Ryer had
    given Aachener and Talsbach had stuck but good, even if they
    were known only among the command crew. And the Ger-
    mans were loud; Parnell's bunk was below Aachener's, and

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    203
    
    last night he had to shake him several times before the astro-
    naut-trainee finally shut up, "I hope the jazz I put on didn't
    keep you up," he said.
     "Hmm?" Lewitt glanced away from his console for a mo-
    ment. "Naw, it didn't keep me awake. Didn't even hear it."
    He swore under his breath as he studied one of the meters.
    "Hey, you bastard! You forgot to realign the solar array. Bat-
    tery's down three percent."
     "I did? Sorry about that." He watched as Lewitt carefully
    adjusted a knob which turned the outrigger mercury-solar
    mirror toward the Sun. Still, he was relieved to find that Lew-
    itt hadn't overheard his end of the conversation with the
    Wheel; if Jay hadn't heard it, then the chances were good that
    no one else had either.
     Nonetheless, Parnell knew that he couldn't handle this by
    himself. He had to confide in someone he could trust, and
    Lewitt was the best prospect. As the flight engineer settled
    into his couch, Parnell unbuckled himself from the pilot's
    seat and pushed over to his friend.
     "Hey, Jay," he said softly, grabbing hold of a ceiling rail and
    looking down at the engineer, "there's something I've got to
    tell you. While you were asleep, I received a call from the sta-
    tion..."
     It took just a few minutes for Parnell to relate the gist of the
    emergency transmission from Laughlin and Zimm. He left
    out many of the details, if only because it would have taken
    too long to explain the exact nature of the relationship be-
    tween Thor200 and Mr. Grid. He was surprised to see that
    Lewitt took it so calmly; his only outward display of emotion
    was a raised eyebrow and a slight pursing of his lips as he
    listened to his commander's suspicions.
     "And you believe this?" Jay asked when Parnell was fin
     ished.
     Parnell shrugged. "I don't know. It sounds kind of far
     fetched, but ... 11
      "But it came from Old Joe, and Hal Robinson doesn't write
     science fiction anymore." Jay took a sip from his lukewarm
     coffee, grimaced, and tucked the squeeze bulb between his
     knees so it wouldn't drift away. "I dunno. I gotta admit,

    




    204
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    Dooley's been acting sort of flaky ever since we got started.
    But that's no real reason to start thinking he's . .
     "An imposter?"
     "An imposter, whatever you want to call him." Lewitt
    grinned. "Did you ever see that movie ... what was it, The
    Manchurian Candidate? The one where John Lennon is sup-
    posed to be brainwashed into killing a presidential candi-
    date?" He shrugged. "Good movie, but I thought it was kind
    of a crock."
     "Maybe so." Gene had been pursuing the same line of
    thought for the last two hours. "This isn't a movie, though ...
    and Dooley's the guy who's supposed to reactivate the bunker
    computers at Teal Falcon."
     "We've got the keys. . .
     "We've got the keys, sure, but he's the man carrying the
    football."
     "The computer codes?" Jay's eyes narrowed. "What are you
    getting at?"
     "Think about it." Parnell gripped the bar above his head
    and performed a clumsy chin-up. "He's carrying half of the
    program that activates the bunker's c-cube system. Once he
    plugs it in, he's got complete control of the Minutemen. That
    means he doesn't have to fire them toward the Sun. If he
    wants, he can aim them at any point on Earth. . . "
     "Yeah, but what does that do?" Lewitt looked at him
    askance. "C'mon. So he decides to fire them at ... I dunno,
    Washington, D.C., or New York, whatever. It would still take
    two days for the rockets to reach ground zero. NORAD would
    see them coming long before then and do something about it."
     "Like what? Evacuate Washington or New York? You have
    any idea what that would take?"
    "Maybe it doesn't have to be a city. It could be Crystal Pal
    ace itself." Crystal Palace was the code name for NORAD's
    strategic defense complex beneath Cheyenne Mountain in
    Colorado. "Maybe it would be Owl Hoot, Minnesota. Point is,
    they'd have two days to scramble an a-sat system and blow'
    lem out of space."                         I
     Parnell had to admit that Lewitt had a point. If nuclear ter-
    rorism was the objective, then taking over Teal Falcon was a
                                              A

    




    lu
    
    ve
    
    al-
    )'s
    in
    is,
    ~)w
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    205
    
    poor way of going about it. The six Minutemen at Sabine Cra-
    ter were intended to be second-strike weapons; they were use-
    less when it came to launching a sneak attack against anyone
    but the lowliest third-world nation, and even Somalia or Ban-
    gladesh would be able to find some patron superpower with
    the technological capability to protect them within two days.
    International ABM treaties notwithstanding, it wasn't impos-
    sible to intercept an incoming nuke from the Moon; everyone
    knew that antisatellite systems had been devised in the eight-
    ies which could knock down a low-orbit target.
     Gene absently rubbed his beard. "I don't know how it would
    work, either ... but that doesn't mean we can ignore this."
    He stifled a yawn as he checked his watch. It was almost 0230
    Zulu. With luck, he could manage a couple of hours of shut-
    eye before he had to get up again and prepare for the landing
    at Tranquillity Base. "I'm just saying we should keep a close
    eye on Dooley. Call it paranoid, but. . . "
     "I hear you." Lewitt nodded, although skepticism was wri
    ten across his face. "Anything else?"
     Pamell hesitated. "Yeah. One more thing ... if this isn't a
    snark hunt, then he may not be acting alone. If I was a terror-
    ist roup or whatever, I wouldn't send Dooley out here with-
    oYsome sort of backup."
     "Ah, c'mon!" Jay's credulity had clearly been stretched as
    far as it would go. "Who else do you think is involved? Lea-
    more? Hans and Franz?"
     For the first time since he had brought up the subject, Gene
    wondered if he wasn't indeed jumping at shadows. He realized
    how all this must sound to Lewitt: an old Cold War astronaut,
    brought back into service for one last mission, still searching
    for commies beneath the bed. Now more than ever, he was
    feeling his age....
     But he had gone this far already, so he might as well spell
    out everything that had crossed his mind.
     "Keep a sharp watch on Ryer," he said quietly. "Dooley's
    not the only one who's been acting a little weird lately. Ynow
    what I mean?"
      Jay slowly nodded, his expression suddenly very somber.

    




    206
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    "Yeah," he murmured. "I've noticed that." He frowned. "But
    why would she ... ?"
     "She's got a grudge. Let's just put it that way."
     A comer of Lewitt's mouth lifted. "So I've heard." He
    shrugged. "Okay. Maybe you got a point, skipper. I'll watch
    fern both."
     "Do that." Gene's eyelids were beginning to feel heavy. The
    human body needs less rest in free-fall than it does on Earth;
    on the other hand, he had been on duty for the last sixteen
    hours. For some reason, though, he didn't feel like going down
    to C-deck.
     "If you don't mind," he said, pushing off from the bulkhead,
    "I'm just going to catch a few winks at my station. Mind if I
    turn down the lights a bit?"
     Lewitt looked a little surprised. "What, too tired to go
    below? "
     "Just don't want to deal with the snoring, that's all." Parnell
    pulled himself along the handrails until he reached the com-
    mand couch, pausing by the astrogator's station to hit the
    switch that irised the ceiling dome shut. He didn't want to
    admit it to Lewitt, but he was also reluctant to leave his post
    on A-deck just now.
     Nor did he relish the idea of going to sleep in a dark room
    so close to Dooley.

    




    it
    
    rn
    
    Y
    ,0
    
    11-
    
    ie
    
    M
    
    From the transcript of a hearing before the Ways and Means
    Committee, United States Senate; March 14, 1988.
    
     Sen. Warren R Rudman (R., NH): The chair recognizes Senator
    Hollings.
     Sen. Ernest F Hollings (D., SC): Thank you, Senator. First off, I wish to
    compliment Mr. Ballou and his staff for being so candid in their review of
    NASA's current status. This committee hasn't always received straight
    answers from the space agency, but I'm pleased to see that the current
    NASA administrator has broken from the past and supplied us with such
    a comprehensive report.
     Hamilton Ballou, Chief Administrator, NASA: You're welcome, Sena-
    tor. I don't agree with your assessment o my agency s onesty in ea ing
    with Ways and Means before now, but I'll accept even a left-handed
    compliment.
     Hollings: In an election year, Mr, Ballou, any compliment is a good one.
    I'm particularly impressed with the sheer size of the report NASA has
    prepared-1,125 pages in all, almost as long as Tom Clancy's new
    novel-and the presentation you've just given us, but there are still quite
    a few questions I have about its summation.
     If I may quote from ... ah, page 12, par-agr-aph 3-you say, "We
    strongly believe that unless the United States acts now to preserve the
    technological infrastructure of its civil space program, this countr-/ will
    continue to lose ground to competing foreign space programs, until
    NASA becomes an agency without any clear purpose or objective." Can
    you clarify that statement for the committee, please?
     Ballow Certainly, Senator. Last September, the European Space
    Agency successfully tested its new Sanger spaceplane. A private German
    aerospace corporation, GmbH Koenig, has already expressed interest in
    purchasing three Sangers for the purpose of commercial space activities.
    This follows the success of the French-German firm Arianespace 'in cap-
    turng over fifty percent of the global commercial satellite launch industry
    with its xpendable Ariane boosters. Koenig has also declared its interest
    in constructing solar power satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit.
     Once the Sanger becomes fully operational, Germany will have a reus-
    able manned spacecraft which can outperform our Atlas-C ferries. After
    the President permanently grounded Discovery and Congress voted
     down NASA's request to build either a replacement for Challenger or a

    




    208
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    new generation of single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, this country has been
    left with a fleet of spacecraft which is over twenty-five years old.
     Not only that, but the last time Space Station One was retrofitted was
    three years ago. As grateful as NASA is for the appropriations which
    made this possible, the new computers are already a generation behind
    state-of-the-art cybernetic technology, and in five more years they will be
    hopelessly obsolete. Because the Reagan Administration also clownscaled
    operations on the Wheel and at Tranquillity Base, we're left with a space
    station and a moonbase which are critically undermanned as well as un-
    derfinanced. We believe ...
     Hollings: Okay, hold it right there. You Just hit the key word-
    underfinanced." Of course, it shouldn't be seen as coincidental that your
    report comes at the same time as the NASA budget for the next fiscal
    year is being considered by both the House and Senate, but this report
    seems to state that unless this country continues to spend as much
    money as it already does on space, if not increase appropriations, then
    the space program will fall apart tomorrow.
     Ballow Not tomorrow morning, Senator, or perhaps not even by next
    Tuesday ... but it will continue to deteriorate over the coming decade
    until it becomes next to negligible. In the meantime, Europe will continue
    to develop its spacefaring capability. In all likelihood, so will Japan. When
    this occurs, the United States will be left with a space station and a lunar
    base that will be unable to compete in the global marketplace for spac
    based services.
     Hollings: Such as these ... um, solar-powered satellites? Mr. Ballou,
    may I remind you that this country already has an energy surplus? Even
    without building new nuclear power plants, the U.S. is able to furnish
    ample electrical powerto all its citizens.
     Ballow Senator, may I remind the committee that our energy lifeline is
    largely dependent upon foreign oil? For now, yes, we enjoy the advantage
    of having the OPEC nations in disagreement over production and ship-
    ping, but we can't depend on that forever, Europe and Japan have already
    learned that lesson, which is why they're working on developing long-
    range forms of energy supply. If we ...
     Hollings: And I should remind the chief administrator that we are fac-
    ing a budget deficit which requires all sectors of the government to make
    cutbacks in spending ...
     Ballow Yes, sir. I've noted the salary increase the Senate just voted
    itself ...
     Rudman: Mr. Ballou, please keep to the matter at hand.

    




    U
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    209
    
    een
    
    as
    ich
    ind
    I be
    led
    ace
    un-
    
    en
    nar
    ce-
    
    ou,
    V en
     ish
    
    ed
    
     Ballow I apologize, Mr. Chairman. Please ignore that outburst. It was
    uncalled-for.
     Rudman: I quite agree. Senator Hollings?
     Hollings: As I was saying, under the Deficit Reduction Act we've re-
    quired all federal agencies to trim their fiscal outlays to reduce the na-
    tional deficit by half over the next five years. NASA is no exception to
    the rule, Mr. Ballou, and I don't see any reason why we should make an
    exception. NASA may want to explore the stars and galaxies, but we've
    got many pressing matters on Earth which need to be taken care of first.
    If our European allies and Japan want to squander their money on sky-
    high projects, they can do so.
     But down at the Air and Space Museum there's a rock in a display case
    that looks no different than a rock from South Carolina, and it took
    almost three hundred billion dollars to get it here from Mars. Your study
    says we should spend more tax money to go back and get another rock
    to keep it company. Now, how do you justify that sort of expenditure,
    Mr. Ballou?
     Ballow Senator, a follow-up to Project Ares was suggested as a long-
    term proposal, with another manned mission occurring sometime in the
    early twenty-first century if all other obje~lives in our proposal were first
    achieved. We're not seriously suggesting that we go straight back to Mars.
    We're simply say' ng that NASA's operati ng budget cannot be trimmed
    much further without cutting into muscle and bone. We ...
     Rudman: Thank you, Mr. Ballou. The chair calls for a recess. We'll
    continue this discussion on Friday, April 2.
    
    k

    




    S-I-X-T-E-E-N
    
    2/19/95-0655 GMT
    
    ~ltitude seventy-five hundred
    
    feet, manual attitude control is good."
     We copy, Conestoga. You're now in final approach phase.
     "Landing gear lowered, landing shoe deployed. Passing high
    gate at angels seven-three and all systems are nominal."
     You're go for landing.
     His palms were sticky with sweat; Parnell wiped them off
    on his trousers, then took A second to glance around A-deck.
    On the opposite side of the flight deck Ryer had her hands
    locked on the control yoke, her eyes flickering across the myr-
    iad dials and digital displays at her station, while Lewitt care-
    fully watched the engine status board at his console.
     Conestoga had passed "high gate," the point of no return.
    At this juncture, it was a captive of lunar gravity and was
    committed to touchdown except in the most dire emergency,
    in which case firing engines to achieve escape velocity meant
    using the fuel reserves. If that happened, they would have no
    recourse except to limp home.
     That wasn't going to happen, though. So far, the descent
    had been smooth. One of the CRTs on Parnell's console dis-
    played a map of the landing site, with a series of concentric
    circles expanding outward from the ground-zero mark. He
    tapped a command into his kevboard and the computer re-

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    211
    
     sponded by pinging twice; the tiny crosshatch designating
     Conestoga's position was slightly to the left of the circles.
     "Altitude two thousand feet and closing," he said. "Landing
     beacon is acquired, thirty-five degrees from mark. Over."
     "Correcting attitude," Ryer said. "Closing in on landing
     beacon,"
     Parnell felt the ship tremble as Ryer fired thrusters to com-
     pensate for Conestoga's drift. The crosshatch moved closer to
     the bull's-eye as the moonship homed in on the automatic
     radio beacon at Tranquillity Base.
     Roger that, Conestoga. You're looking good. Over. Main-
     Ops was monitoring radar telemetry sent from the base, play-
     ing backseat driver.
     "Fuel reserves nominal," Lewitt said. "The shoe is down,
     gear is locked." The shoe was a vertical probe which extended
     straight down from the center of the engine array, designed to
     absorb most of the landing shock and stabilize Conestoga
     once it was on the ground.
     "Altitude one thousand two hundred feet, seven degrees off
     the zero and closing." Parnell glanced away from his board,
     looking across the compartment at Ryer. "Need to goose it a
     little there, Cris. There's a boulder field you need to. . . "
     "I know, I know. I've been here before." Ryer was fighting
     the yoke with one hand as she worked the thrusters with the
     other. Landing four hundred tons of flying skyscraper on a
     dime was not a job Parnell envied. Ryer had the skill and guts
     needed to pull it off, but he had done this once himself, and
     he didn't recall being so goddamned nervous back in '69...
    F  Forget it, he told himself. Let her do her job.
     Conestoga was now only a thousand feet above the base's
     cleared landing area. Although Ryer had managed to compen-
     sate for engine drift, the ship's terminal velocity was sixty-
     five mph above touchdown speed. "Angels one and we're on
      the beam," he said. "Coming in a little fast . . . "
       As he spoke, he felt the entire fuselage shudder as Ryer
      throttled up the engines. She was braking Conestoga just in
      time; the ship listed one degree starboard, but she gimbaled
      the port thrusters and quickly brought the mammoth vessel
      back in line.

    




    212
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     We copy, Conestoga, you're on the mark. We check you at
    altitude seven hundred fifty feet and closing. Over.
     "Roger that, Main-Ops. Altitude seven-two-five, all sys-
    tems a-okay for touchdown." For the first time since they had
    commenced final approach, Gene looked up at the TV moni-
    tors. The lunar horizon was no longer curved, but instead lay
    as flat as a Kansas prairie, gray volcanic maria with short
    rounded hills in the far distance. Dust was already being
    kicked up by the engines, but through the dirty haze he could
    make out boulders and small impact craters, and glimpses of
    unnatural man-made shapes reflecting sunlight....
     No time for sightseeing. He pulled his eyes away from the
    screens and back to the console where they belonged. "Alti-
    tude four hundred, altitude three-five-oh. .
     We copy, Conestoga ...
     "Reserves down by point two percent," Lewitt said.
     "Throttling back five percent," Ryer responded.
     "Staying on the beam, zero drift. Altitude one-fifty, one
    twenty-five. Throttle up a notch there . .
     "Engines up one percent . . ."
     "Altitude seven-fiver, attitude nominal. .
     We copy, Conestoga. Looking good.
     "Altitude fifty, engines down two percent." The entire ves-
    sel shook as if it were caught'in a minor earthquake. Nothing
    could be seen on the screens now except dust and dense shad-
    ows. Parnell licked his dry lips. "Altitude twenty-five, alti-
    tude twenty. . . "
     "Engines back two percent . . .
     "Shoe contact light!" Lewitt shouted.
     "Altitude fifteen ... twelve ... ten. .
     Now he could hear an almost impossible roar as Conesto-
    ga's engines baked the hard volcanic floor. "Eight ... six ...
    five ... cut main engines."
     "Roger. Cutting main engines. Engine arm off.,,
     The trembling stopped, and for an eternal half-second there
    was the sensation of falling ... then the landing gear slamme
    into the regolith.
     "Touchdown!" Ryer yelled.
    
    Conestoga teetered on its legs like a drunk fighting for bal-
    
                                           4

    




    I
    i at
    
    ti_
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    213
    
    ance. For an instant it seemed as if the towering vessel would
    keel over and crash on its side, but then the gyros told the
    
    ;ys-                                                  hydraulics which end was supposed to be up, and the moon
    iad                                                   ship remained erect. The fuselage creaked as gravity settled
    )ni-                                                  old bulkheads and deck plates into unfamiliar positions, but
    lay after a moment that, too, passed.
    ort And then there was nothing but silence.
    ~ng                                                   Parnell took a deep, shuddering breath. "Wheel Command,
    .Ad this is Conestoga. We have landed. Over."
    of We copy, Conestoga. Good job.
       "Engines safed," Lewitt said, his fingers quickly moving
    he across his console to click switches. "Internal pressure okay,
    .ti-                                                  landing gear intact, main computer reset on standby mode.
    All systems green."
       "Sounds right to me." Parnell unbuckled his harness, then
       swung his legs off the couch and stood up, stretching his back
       and arms. His muscles ached slightly from the unaccustomed
      neeffort, but it was nice to feel gravity again, even if it was only
           one-sixth Earth-normal. "Nice flying there, Cris."
       "Thank you, Commander." She had pulled out her logbook,
          and didn't look up to acknowledge the compliment.
    "Couldn't have done it without you."
       He couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not, but de
       cided to let it pass. He had other things to worry about just
       d-now. He sat down in the couch again and tabbed the radio
       key. "Wheel Command, this is Parnell. We're down and all
    systems are copacetic. Joe, you there?"
       Joe Laughlin's voice came over the comlink five seconds
        later. Right here, Gene. Looks like a good landing.
       "You can credit Captain Ryer for that. All I did was ride
      D_shotgun." Ryer smiled a little and nodded her head, but con
    tinued to write in her logbook.
       Let's see if I can shake yon up a little, he thought.
       'Listen, Joe," Parnell continued. "I want to alter the mis
      ~dsion plan a bit, if you don't mind. I want to hold off entering
       the base and proceed straight to Teal Falcon instead. You
    copy? Over."
       Ryer looked up sharply as he said this. Lewitt swiveled his

    




    214
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    couch around, his right eyebrow raised querulously. "Hey,
    Gene," he began, "what are you... ? "
     Parnell slightly held up his hand and shook his head. Fine
    with me, Gene, Laughlin said, but Mission is going to want a
    reason. In fact, we've got Ray on the line. Hold on.
     A few seconds later Ray Harvey's voice came over the S-
    band, relayed from the control room at Von Braun Space Cen-
    ter. Hi, Gene. Mce to see you guys made it safely. What's the
    deal with wanting to head over to Sabine? Over.
     Damn. Parnell hadn't expected this, although he should
    have. Harvey was mission director, after all; any major change
    in the schedule would have to be approved by him. Joe Laugh-
    lin would have seconded the motion with no questions asked,
    but Harvey was a stickler for details.
     "Thanks, Ray," he replied. "Look, on the way down, I got
    to wondering about the status of the missiles. They've been
    mothballed for a long time now, y'know, and we're probably
    going to want to give them an inspection before we ready
    them for launch. There might have also been some systern
    decay in the bunker mainframes, so we may want to give
    them a good shakedown."
     These were the best excuses he could concoct on the spur
    of the moment. "Anyway," he went on, "it might be a good
    idea if we hold off on entering the base until after we've fired
    the birds, and use the time instead to go over everything at
    Sabine. You copy? Over."
     Parnell held his breath as he waited for the reply. Right
    he could imagine Harvey conferring with the Mission Co
    team at Von Braun. In the old days, no one would have asked
    permission; they would have just gone ahead and done what-
    ever needed to be done, and let the suits scream about it later.
    But if his plan was going to work, he had to give the appear-
    ance that he suspected nothing sinister of anyone.
                                           now;
                                           ntrol
    
     A minute passed before Ray Harvey came back on the air.
    Ah, we copy that, Gene, but our people here say both the,
    missiles and the mainframes were thoroughly checked'oud,
    before the last team left Teal Talcon and everything was
    working fine then. I'm not sure what another inspection is
    going to accomplish. Over.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    215
    
     Ryer was watching him intently; her headset was still
    plugged into her board, so she could hear both sides of the
    conversation. Gene rolled his eyes for her benefit and
    mouthed the word dummy. "That's great, Ray, but that was
    three years ago. We've had some solar activity between now
    and then, though, and I'm just concerned that something
    might have gotten fried in the meantime."
     Parnell shrugged offhandedly as he played his trump card.
    "Hey, if your guys think everything's okay, that's fine with
    me. But if the President tries to launch those missles at 1200
    and they don't go up on time ... well, y'know, don't say I
    didn't warn you. Over."
     A longer pause this time. Although he didn't believe in ESP,
    Parnell almost felt as if he had established telepathic contact
    with Ray Harvey across a quarter of a million miles of space.
    No one at NASA had forgotten what happened when Chal-
    lenger was rushed into launch despite dire warnings from
    Morton Thiokol engineers about the effects of extreme cold
    upon the shuttle's solid-rocket boosters; several senior NASA
    bureaucrats had decided to take the gamble because Reagan
    was going to mention the shuttle during his State of the
    Union Address that night. If Clinton came on live TV and
    pushed an ornamental button to launch the Teal Falcon mis-
    siles, only to have the Minutemen fail to fly ...
     Ah, Gene, we copy. Harvey's voice was stiffly formal, as if
    he was prepared to summon up this exchange later before a
    blue-ribbon board of inquiry. We concur with your decision to
     deviate from mission profile. You have permission to proceed
     directly to Teal Falcon for purposes of inspecting the missiles.
     Do you copy? Over.
      Parnell tried hard not to look relieved. "Roger that. Thanks,
     Ray. We'll be in touch. Conestoga over and out."
      He switched off the radio, pulled the headset down around
     his neck and unplugged the cord, then took a deep breath.
     Nothing like arguing with a pen-pusher ,
      "What was that all about?" Ryer asked.
      Parnell stood up again. "Just what I said. I want a couple of
     extra hours to make sure Teal Falcon is shipshape. After we

    




    216
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    get done there, we've got plenty of time to go inside the base
    and play around before we go home. Any objections?"
     Lewitt unbuckled his harness, stood up, and arched his
    back. "None here. I've never been to Sabine before ... gives
    me a chance for a last look-see before we give it to Hans and
    Franz."
     Ryer looked skeptical, but she said nothing. "Sounds like a
    unanimous decision." Gene pulled off the headset and tossed
    it on the couch, then stepped toward the gangway ladder. "Go
    ahead and lower the crane, Jay. I'll go below and tell everyone
    about the schedule change. I'm sure Ms. Rhodes and Mr.
    Bromleigh will be happy, at least."
     Then he started down the ladder to C-deck. He could al-
    ready hear the mixed buzz of conversation from the passen-
    gers as they gazed through the portholes at the primitive
    landscape.
     So far, so good.
    
    Conestoga's elevator was little more than an
    
                                      open bucket
    with a hinged door on one side, lowered from the catwalk by
    a retractable bridge crane. Parnell and Ryer brought the ATS
    news team down with them; when the elevator touched
    ground, Rhodes tried to step off first, but Parnell stopped her
    with a raised arm.                         J
     "Sorry, ma'am," he said. "Command privilege. Sort of a tra-
    ditional thing."
     Actually, there was no such ritual; he just didn't want to
    allow Rhodes the dubious honor of being the first person from
    the last American lunar expedition to set foot on the Moon.
    The press had done enough for the space program already. She
    harrumphed a bit as Parnell swung the door open, but didn't
    say anything as he stepped onto the cold gray dust of Mare
    Tranquillitatis.
     Tranquillity Base looked much the same as the last time he
    had laid eyes on it. Sunlight cast long, skeletal shadows across
    the gray, pockmarked basalt and reflected off the rectangula
    black arrays of the solar power station. just beyond it lay three
    long humps, like oversize Quonset huts buried beneath the
    regolith: the base habitats, along with the unpressurized ga-

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    217
    
    rage. A few spotlights around the camp perimeter were still
    operating, but most were dark, their filaments either long-
    since eroded or their globes shattered by micrometeorite im-
    pacts.
     Countless footprints lay upon the dusty ground, criss-
    crossed by tracks left by lunar tractors. Parnell added a few
    more prints as he slowly walked toward the habitat, feeling
    again the strange dry-yet-slippery sensation of the regolith
    with each step he took.
     At the farthest perimeter of the camp, the cannibalized car-
    casses of three abandoned moonships rose above the flat ter-
    rain. One of them was Eagle Four, the freighter from the Luna
    Two expedition that had brought the Teal Falcon missiles to
    the Moon a generation ago; it and the two other freighters
    parked nearby had been stripped of all usable parts once their
    one-way missions had been completed. They stood like mute
    sentries above a ghost town.
     Everything was still and silent.
     A few dozen yards away, Parnell spotted the American flag
    that John Harper Wilson had raised here almost twenty-six
    years ago, its bunting stiffened by fine wires laced through the
    fabric so that it appeared to be waving in a nonexistent breeze.
    A small bronze plaque had been laid on the ground beneath
    the staff; Parnell bunny-hopped over to it, raising the gold
    visor of his helmet so he could read the words more clearly.
    
                           HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
                            FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
                                   JULY 1969 A.D.
                          WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND
    
     'Liar," he whispered.
     Excuse me, Commander? Berkley Rhodes's voice was sharp
    in his helmet earphones. What did you just say?
     He turned around to see her and Bromleigh coming toward
    him, shepherded by Ryer. The two correspondents seemed to
    be having a difficult time mastering the fine art of moonwalk-

    




    218
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    ing. The white fabric outer covering of their hardsuits was
    caked with dust, showing that they had already fallen a few
    times. Fortunately, Bromleigh's camcorder was still aboard
    Conestoga; it was not designed to operate in hard vacuum,
    and the last company to manufacture lunar-grade TV equip-
    ment had lost the design specs when it had been bought out
    by a Japanese conglomerate five years ago.
     just as well. Parnell didn't want a picture of this. "Never
    mind, Ms. Rhodes," he said. "Just thinking to myself."
     Looks strange, Bromleigh commented. He stood hump-
    backed, still trying to get accustomed to the mass of the life-
    support unit on his back. You kinda think someone else
    should be here, yknow? Like someone should be coming out
    to meet us.
     "You're right." Parnell looked away from the plaque and
    cast his eyes around the abandoned moonbase. "Someone
    should."
     Did someone come out to greet ships when they landed,
    Commander? Rhodes asked. I mean, was there a welcomi . ng
    committee, or ... well, did they ... ?
     "Oh, sure." The flag was a little crooked, probably bent over
    from Conestoga's landing exhaust. Parnell reached out to
    straighten it. "We had flaxen-haired maiden girls in grass
    skirts, walking timidly out to offer us baskets of fruit. And
    then we went inside where there was a feast awaiting us. . . .
     Seriously.
     "Seriously?" He managed to get the staff to stay straight.
    Not that it mattered; by this time tomorrow, he would be
    pulling down the flag, folding it and taking it home to a glass..,
    case at the Visitors' Center at the Cape, where tourists coul&
    stare at it with bleak stupidity. "Seriously, I think you,",
    should-"
     He stopped himself. What he was about to s
    
                                                      uggest was ana-
    tomically impossible, especially in a spacesuit. "Never mind.
    Cris, if you'll escort Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Bromleigh back t6
    the ship, they can help you bring down the rest of the passen-
    gers. "
     Okay, Gene. He was rather surprised to hear her use his

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    219
    
    first name for a change; he couldn't make out her expression
    through her visor. You're going over to the base?
     "Yeah. I'm going to check out the tractors, make sure
    they're still operational. Jay, are you there?"
     Loud and clear, Gone. Lewitt was still on A-deck aboard
    Conestoga, checking out the ship before he left her. What's
    the word?
     "Tell the Wheel we're all going EVA," he said, "then shut
    her down and suit up. When you get down, c'mon over to the
    garage and help me get the tracs rolling. Okay?"
     Will do. Over and out.
     "Thanks, pal. See you in a few minutes." He looked back at
    Ryer. "When everyone is down, bring 'ern over to the garage.
    Try to make sure no one else falls down, okay?"
     Got it. She turned around and began treading back to the
    ship, keeping Rhodes and Bromleigh in front of her. Now re-
    member what I told you ... small steps at first, big steps
    when you've got your balance.
     Parnell watched them go-and sure enough, Rhodes hadn't
    taken ten steps before she went sprawling in a cloud of dust.
    He turned around and headed for the base, taking bunny-hops
    which covered a lot of ground in a hurry. He was alone for a
    few minutes; he could make it count.
     The garage was an open shell, unpressurized and vaguely
    resembling an immense coffee can half-buried in the silt of a
    country river. Two lunar tractors were parked side by side
    within its shelter. Great steel tanks with caterpillar treads and
    bubble cockpits, they were designed for long-range expedi-
    tions, capable of transporting five men apiece across the harsh
     terrain.
      After he flicked on the ceiling lamps, Parnell made certain
     that the electric charge cables were still in place; with luck,
     the tractors' nickel-cadmium storage batteries would still be
     functional. They should be; the General Motors Corporation
     had built the tanks to be the best vehicles that 500 million
     dollars could buy, cost overruns notwithstanding.
      But the tractors were not his top priority. He went to the far
      all of the garage and opened the hatch leading to Habitat
      ne's airlock. He checked the gauges on the wall; as he had

    




    220
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    been briefed, the last crew to leave Tranquillity had depressur-
    ized both habitats before abandoning the base. They had done
    so in order to prevent anything inside rusting from disuse;
    right now, though, this meant that he didn't have to wait for
    the entire habitat to be repressurized before he could enter the
    airlock.
     He opened the inner hatch, then switched on his helmet
    lamp and climbed into the base. He had to move fast now;
    although he was counting on the ineptitude of the ATS report-
    ers and the inexperience of the Koenig Selenen astronauts to
    slow things down, he didn't want to be caught inside the base.
     The oval glow of the lamp cast weird shadows across the
    empty racks of the suit-up room. Another set of hatches led
    into the wardroom, where a long mess bench faced a wall-
    size projection TV screen. He stepped on something that slid
    beneath his boot; looking down, he saw an old issue of People
    magazine with Mick Jagger on the cover.
     "Talkin' 'bout the midnight rambler," he whispered under
    his breath, careful not to let anyone overhear him on the com-
    link.
     He found the ladder leading to the habitat's upper deck. It
    wasn't made to be climbed by someone in a hardsuit, so he
    wasted a couple of precious minutes trying to gain good hand-
    and foot-holds on the rungs, but when he finally squeezed
    through the small round hatch, he found himself in the base
    commander's quarters, an attic-sized space barely large
    enough to hold a desk, a chair, and a set of metal file cabinets.
     Breathing hard now, he went straight for the desk, praying
    that it wasn't locked. He tugged at the bottom drawer and was
    relieved when it easily slid open. Fine dust sprayed against his
    faceplate as he pushed empty file folders out of the way.
     When the USSF had established the base, someone had de-
    cided that the base commander should be issued a pistol, just
    in case someone among the crew lost his mind during the long
    lunar night and tried to blow out the airlock. That had never
    happened, but so far as Parnell knew the weapon had
    mained at the base.
     For a few anxious moments, he thought that the gun has
    been removed. Then the bright glare of the helmet lamp

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    221
    
    glinted against something resting at the bottom of the drawer.
    Parnell sucked in a deep breath, then shoved aside some old
    paperwork until he found the Colt .45 Officer's ACP auto-
    matic.
     "Gotcha," he whispered.

    




       NOW    "m
       
       I ,

       


    From The New York Times; July 1/, 1991
    
                           WHITE HOUSE CONSIDERED USING
                                MOON NUKES DURING
                                   DESERT STORM
                               By Arthur M. Erikson
                         (Special to The New York Times)
    
     WASHINGTON, July I O-According to classified Pentagon docu-
    ments, President Bob Dole issued a secret directive to the National
    Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defense
    during the Desert Storm military campaign that called for first-use of
    lunar-based nuclear missiles against Iraq in the event that U.S. ground
    forces in Saudi Arabia were overwhelmed by Iraqi soldiers.
     The six-page memorandum, which was released to The New York
    Times, The Wdshington Post, and ATS News by a high-ranking Pentagon
    official, was signed by President Dole and dated September 14, 1990.
    The memo states that the U.S. Air Force should "Immediately place SAC
    officers in the Teal Falcon bunkeC and have them ready to "target vital
    military sites within Iraq" in the event that conventional forces were de-
    feated in combat by Iraq's army.
     According to the Pentagon source, one of the sites which would have
    been targeted by the lunar missiles was Baghdad, Ir-aq's capital city. Other
    sites would have included Iraq's oil fields and key military installations
    surrounding Baghdad.
     The Teal Falcon base, located near Tranquillity Base on the Moon,
    holds six modified Minuteman 11 missiles, each containing a single nuclear
    warhead. Teal Falcon's existence was made public in 1983; it has not
    been officially operational since 1972, although the missiles were never
    removed from their silos. It was intended to be a second-strike nuclear
    Aernative in the event of a preemptive strategic attack by the former
    Soviet Union (see sidebor, poge / 0).
     The Dole Administration has denied the existence of the memo,
    claiming that it is a fraud. However, White House chief of staff John
    Sununu says that if the memo indeed exists, it would only prove that
     President Dole was willing to "do whatever it takes to protect the lives
     of American servicemen."
      Congressional critics of the Dole Administr-ation were quick to con-

    




    224
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    demn the White House for its willingness to use Teal Falcon in the Desert
    Storm conflict. "if the President had decided to use nuclear weapons
    against Iraq," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate floor, "then
    the Middle East would have been engulfed in a nuclear war which could
    have cost millions of lives, both civilian and military. The decision might
    have ignited World War III ... it's rash and inexcusable."

    




    I
    
    S - E - V - E - N - T - E - E - N
    
    2119195 -0941 GMT
    
    large aluminum sign, in-
    scribed in three languages, was posted a hundred feet from the
    entrance to Sabine Crater. In English, it read:
    
                                     WARNING!!
                             U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY-NO
                                    TRESPASSING
                              DO NOT PASS THIS POINT!
                     This Area Is A Protected Military Area And
                      Is Off-Limits To Unauthorized Civilians.
                           Injury Or Fatality May Result.
                      Intruders May Be Subject To Fines And/Or
                                   Prison Terms.
    
     The warning was reiterated in Russian and German. just
    beyond the sign lay the ten-foot chain-link fence that com-
    pletely encircled the low walls of the impact crater; the hard-
    packed dirt road which led straight across the maria from
    Tranquillity Base to Teal Falcon stopped at the gate.
     Isn't that a little redundant? James Leamore commented.
    He was gazing at the sign through a window slot in the cabin

    




    226
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    of Tractor One. After all, if we're killed trying to break in,
    how can we be fined or sent to jail?
     It was written by the government, Paul Dooley replied.
    They'll find a way. He looked up at Parnell, who was sitting
    in the driver's seat beneath the Plexiglas bubble dome. Hey,
    what the fuck do they mean by that, anyway? Is the place
    mined or what?
     Gene didn't immediately respond. Instead, he looked over
    his shoulder to make sure that Tractor Two had halted behind
    him. The second vehicle was being driven by Cris Ryer; she
    was carrying Rhodes, Bromleigh, Aachener, and Talsbach,
    while he had Dooley, Leamore, and Lewitt. They could have
    pressurized the tractors, but since the nine-mile journey w
    so short, everyone was still wearing their hardsuits.
     Through her dome, Ryer gave him a silent thumbs-up; she
    was waiting for him to clear the way through the defense pe-
    rimeter. Wisely, she wasn't using her radio. "No, not mines,"
    he told Dooley. "See those things on top of the crater wall?"
     Everyone in the passenger compartment peered through the
    windows. Every twenty feet or so, the wall was ringed with
    small, swivel-mounted pairs of tubes, each vaguely resem-
    bling a double-barreled shotgun. "Those are automatic gyrojet
    guns," he explained. "They fire self-propelled thirteen-milli-
    meter rounds with explosive charges in their noses. They can
    punch right through these tanks ... and you don't want to
    know what they can do to your hardsuit."
     Nasty, Lewitt murmured, shaking his head inside his hel-
    met. Don't mess with them.
     Leamore looked worriedly at the thin aluminum shell
    the tractor, but Dooley still wasn't impressed. But nobody's
    inside to fire them, he said, his voice once again assuming an
    irritating whine. I mean, if they can't ...
     "Watch and learn," Parnell said, although he made certain
    that Dooley didn't watch too closely.
     He switched the tractor's radio transmitter to a differ6t
    frequency that only he knew, then tapped a six-digit code
    number into the keypad beneath the transmitter. There was a
    short pause, then the digital readout above the radio displayed

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    227
    
    :0
    
    I-
    
    id
    ie
    h,
    Te
    is
    
    ic
    
    Ie
    I
    ~h
    
    .n
    
    six zeros. At the same moment, electric motors opened the
    fence gates, allowing them entry into the compound.
     Okay, Dooley said. You sent a radio password. I'm im-
    pressed. He leaned back in his seat as much as his life-support
    pack would allow. Real impressed.
     Parnell smiled to himself as he grasped the oversized knob
    of the stick-shift and moved the tractor into gear. Dooley
    didn't know the half of it. The regolith between the fence and
    the crater wall was crisscrossed with tiny wires, a motion de-
    tector that would set off the guns if the proper code wasn't
    received by the bunker on this particular frequency. More-
    over, only the tractors contained radios capable of transmit-
    ting on this wavelength; none of their hardsuit radios could
    do the same. This meant that the only way into Sabine Crater
    was inside a tractor; an individual on foot would be shredded
    by the gyrojet guns if he attempted to gain entrance. Mines
    could be dodged, if one knew the exact pattern in which they
    had been laid out or if an intruder had a metal detector. This
    way, only someone driving a tractor from Tranquillity Base
    who knew the correct code sequence could enter the crater.
     Yet there was no sense in letting Dooley know this. So far
    as Parnell was concerned, this man wasn't really Paul Dooley.
    Even if Cris Ryer was working with him, she didn't know the
    code ... and neither of them knew that the defense perimeter
    worked both ways, coming and going.
      Welcome to my little rattrap, he thought.
     Their caterpillar treads bumping over small stones and
    spewing little plumes of dust, the two tractors moved through
    the gate and down the access road to the lip of the crater, fol-
    lowing the arrows on signs posted along the way. The road led
    up the crater wall and through a narrow passage which had
    been excavated in the crater lip. As he drove into the pass,
    Parnell downshifted to accommodate the steeper grade inside
    the crater and switched on the headlights.
     For a few moments he could see little but the dense shad-
    ows thrown by the walls on either side of his vehicle. Then he
    was through the pass; Sabine Crater opened up before him,
     and there at the bottom lay Teal Falcon.
      At first glimpse it seemed as if nothing man-made existed

    




    228
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    inside the crater. Everything was the same dull-gray color; not
    until the tractors moved slowly down the access road that
    wound around the interior wall did one realize that this was
    the result of camouflage paint. The small, squat dome of the
    control bunker, the short masts of the telemetry array, even
    the hatches of the six missile silos on the far side of the cra-
    ter-all had been disguised to fool Earth-based telescopes,
    LEO spysats, even orbiting lunar probes.
     Parnell only half -listened to the exclamations of his passen-
    gers as he maneuvered the tractor down the roadway. If Laugh-
    lin and Dr. Z were right, he was leading a saboteur-possibly
    two saboteurs-straight to the heart of one of America's most
    lethal defense systems. He was taking a terrible risk; his only
    hope of thwarting him, her, or them was the fact that he was
    forewarned, and that he probably knew a little bit more about
    this system than they did.
     He glanced down at the passenger compartment. As if he
    were reading his mind, Jay Lewitt looked up at him. Their
    eyes met for a moment; Lewitt nodded his head, then point-
    edly fixed his gaze upon Dooley, who was studying the com-
    plex through the windows.
     Parnell almost sighed with relief. At least he wasn't going
    into this alone. Dooley might have an accomplice, but Gene
    also had his own backup'. That, and the pistol hidden in the
    thigh pocket of his suit, gave him some reassurance.
     The road leveled out as the tractor reached the bottom
    the crater. Hauling its wheel to the right, Parnell drove di-
    rectly to the launch bunker's dome, putting on the brakes
    when he was a dozen yards away. Glancing back over his
    shoulder, he saw that Cris Ryer had brought Tractor Two to a
    stop just behind him.
     "Okay," he said. "We're here."
    
     The dome was only the most visible part of the Teal Falcon,
    bunker complex, an anteroom containing a couple of oxygen
    tanks for replenishing life-support packs and a few maffite-
    nance tools. in the center of the floor was a large round hatch,
    which Parnell unlocked by tapping another six-digit code into,
    a keypad on the wall. The hatch popped open; Lewitt raisea

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    229
    
    he
    
    ~nt-
    
    )m_
    
    I of
    di-
    kes
    his
    to a
    
    con
    gen
    ate-
    tch,
    mto
    ised
    
    it, exposing the top of a ladder leading down a sixty-foot shaft
    into the lunar crust. Fluorescent light fixtures along the
    mooncrete walls automatically flickered to life as Parnell led
    the way down into the bunker.
     The bunker was composed of two underground spheres,
    both containing three levels, connected to each other by a sin-
    gle passageway between the second level of each sphere. They
    had been excavated by U.S. Space Force crews using small nu-
    clear charges, similar to the methods used for subsurface
    bomb tests in the Nevada desert. After the chambers had been
    formed and decontaminated, polystyrene balloons had been
    inflated within each sphere, forming airtight inner walls
    which were later protected by aluminum outer walls. Once
    floors, ladders, bulkheads, furnishings, and equipment had
    been installed and an airlock built on Level IA of Unit A, the
    shaft leading down to Unit B was filled and permanently
    sealed; the shaft in Unit A was the only way in or out of the
    bunker.
     Teal Falcon was self-sustaining, its electrical power coming
    from a small nuclear generator placed in another underground
    sphere within the crater, its water and oxygen drawn from
    subsurface tanks near Unit B. It contained living quarters for
    four men, and was designed to sustain them for up to four
    weeks. It was capable of surviving all but a direct hit from a
    one-megaton nuclear warhead, but that hardly mattered; an
    incoming missile from Earth would be detected long before it
    reached ground zero, by which time the launch crew would
    have fired its own birds in retaliation and retreated from the
    bunker.
      In a word, Teal Falcon was a fortress.
      Or better yet, a doomsday machine.
     Fitting nine people into the airlock was a tight squeeze, but
    fortunately it had been designed to accommodate the USSF
    military engineers who had built the complex. Once the ceil-
    ing hatch was shut, Parnell flipped open a wall panel near the
    inner hatch and activated the pressurization controls.
     As air rushed into the compartment, electromagnetic scrub-
    bers kicked in, cleansing their suits of all the dust they had
    collected. A small dust storm swirled around them as the

    




    230
    
    ALLEN STEEL
    
    grime was swept down through the metal grids in the floor.
    Even here, Parnell recalled, there was a fail-safe method. of
    protecting the base: a candy-striped toggle switch inside the
    airlock control panel, labeled VOID, would blow out the airlock
    and render it unusable to forces attacking the base from
    within the crater.
     In the old days processing through the airlock would have
    taken a couple of hours, while their bodies absorbed enough
    nitrogen to prevent a mass-attack of the bends. Fortunately,
    NASA had managed to invent zero-prebreath suits before its
    life-sciences budget got slashed. As a result, they only had to
    endure each other's company for about thirty minutes before
    the indicator chimed, signaling that it was safe to exit the
    airlock.
     Unlike Tranquillity Base, the Teal Falcon bunker had been
    pressurized by the last crew to depart, so that the base could
    be used quickly in the event of war. The hatch opened into a
    larger chamber surrounding the airlock. Its cold metal walls
    were lined with racks and lockers.
     "We'll stow your suits here," Parnell told the others once
    he had removed his helmet. "You'll find jumpsuits in the
    lockers ... sorM but you'll have to look around until you find
    something that fits."
     As Berkley Rhodes took off her helmet, she gasped at the
    sudden rush of frigid air. She wisely didn't complain, but went
    wide-eyed at the thought of undressing in front of seven men.
    "Uhh ... Gene, isn't there a place where a lady can change in
    privacy? "
     Parnell shook his head as he disconnected the feedlines
    from his backpack. "Sorry, maam, but the people who built
    this place didn't think women would ever be allowed down
    here." He cast a glance at Dooley and Leamore, who were
    standing on either side of her. "I'm sure these gentlemen will
    turn their backs, though. Right, guys?"
     Leamore nodded distractedly; he was too busy disconnect-
    ing his air and electrical cables to wonder what Rhodes looked
    like in her skivvies. Aachener and Talsbach were ahead of
    him; they had already pulled off their life-support packs and
    were helping each other out of their suits, murmuring to each

    




    loor.
    )d of
     the
    ,lock
    from
    
    have
    )ugh
    .tely,
    -e its
    id to
    ,f ore
    ~ the
    
    been
    ould
    ito a
    valls
    
    Dnce
     the
     find
    
    : the
    vent
    nen.
     in
    
    .ines
    )Uilt
    own
    mere
    will
    
    Lect-
    )ked
    d of
    and
    -ach
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    231
    
    other in German, Bromleigh was, as usual, keeping his cus-
    tomary silence as he patiently went through the de-suiting
    routine. Ryer apparently didn't care one way or another; she
    was taking the usual shortcuts known to professional astro-
    nauts.
     Dooley, as always, was utterly lost. He had finally managed
    to wrench his helmet off the ring collar; he, too, gasped at the
    first rush of frigid air. "Why's it so goddamn cold?" he yelped,
    then he wrinkled his nose. "Jesus, it smells like gunpowder in
    here! "
     "That's moondust you smell," Lewitt told him. He turned
    around to help Dooley out of his suit. "The place hasn't been
    used in three years ... what else would you expect?"
     Parnell saw the break for which he had been searching.
    "You're right," he said, exhaling a plume of steamy air. "It's
    pretty cold. No telling how the CLLSS is operating, either."
    His backpack and helmet off and stowed on a rack, he de-
    tached the thick gloves from the wrist cuffs and shoved them
    into the locker he had just opened. "I'll go below and check
    the system, make sure everything's up to par."
     "Need help?" Ryer asked.
     "No thanks. I can manage." Without bothering to remove
    the rest of his suit, Parnell trudged over to the floor hatch,
    hauled it open, and climbed down the ladder to Level 2A.
     The logistics deck was slightly wider than the one above it.
    It was packed with consoles and IBM computer mainframes,
    their lights glimmering in the darkness until he found the
    switch that turned on the ceiling fluorescents. It didn't take
    him long to find the master panel of the closed-loop life-sup-
    port system. He spent a few minutes reactivating the base's
    oxygen supply and adjusting the thermostat until it was reset
    at a relatively comfortable 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
     The ceiling ducts creaked as dusty warm air began to seep
    through the vents. He could hear muted conversation from
    the suit-up room above, along with a little bit of dry laughter.
    Once again, Parnell was alone for a few minutes.
     He reached into his thigh pocket and pulled out the auto-
    matic he had taken from the base commander's office. Now

    




    232
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    he had to find a place to hide it: somewhere he could grab it
    in a hurry.
     The narrow passageway leading to Unit Two was open, its
    hatch slightly ajar; beyond that were the bunker's living quar-
    ters. That was secure-he could always stash the gun beneath
    a mattress or in a galley drawer-but it was also too far away.
    He needed a spot close to the ladder leading down to the bot-
    tom level of Unit A.
     There. A small, narrow space between one of the IBM main-
    frames and the bulkhead, close to the hatch leading down to
    level 3A. He knelt as low as the cumbersome hardsuit would
    allow and shoved the gun into the darkness. When he with-
    drew his hand, the Colt remained in place, squeezed between
    the back of the computer and the wall. It couldn't be seen, yet.
    it was near enough to the hatch that he could snatch it in a
    second.
     He stood up and walked across the deck back to the ladder.
    Perhaps he had a chance after all....
    
     Ryer was removing the diskette from a pocket of her hard-
    suit when she heard Parnell climbing back up the ladder. Her
    back was turned to the floor hatch, but she didn't want to risk
    letting him spot the diskette again. Once had been enough to
    arouse his suspicions; if he saw it again, especially here and
    now, its presence would raise too many questions.
     The jumpsuit Cris had found in the locker where she had
    stowed her helmet and gloves was one size too small for her,
    and she had intended to search through the other lockers until
    she located a larger one. She didn't have a choice now, though;
    she hastily picked up the one-piece garment and shoved the
    diskette into a breast pocket.
     She was beginning to step into its legs just as Parnell
    reached the top of the ladder. She glanced over her shoulder at
    him, their eyes met for a moment, then his face reddened and
    he quickly looked away, obviously embarrassed at catching a
    glimpse of his second-in- command in her undies. She hid her
    smile by turning her head; pretending that nothing had hap,
                                             I
    pened, he walked over to help Rhodes hang her hardsuitAN&B
    rack.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    233
    
     The chivalry of Southern gentlemen. There were times,
    Cris had to admit, when heterosexuality had its advantages.
     The others were nearly finished getting dressed. Zipping up
    the front of the suit-it was a little small, although she reck-
    oned Laurell would have enjoyed the way it clung to her
    body-Cris looked over at Dooley to see how he was doing.
    With Lewitt's help, he had finally managed to struggle out of
    his hardsuit. The jumpsuit he'd found was not his size, either,
    and the tight fit did little to flatter his body, but at least he
    had stopped bitching about it. He caught her gaze for a fleeting
    second, then looked away.
     Uwe Aachener and Markus Talsbach had the benefit of ex-
    perience and training. They had long since traded their hard-
    suits for jumpsuits and were now leaning idly against the
    outer airlock wall, murmuring to each other in German as
    they studied the Americans with ill-disguised contempt. Tals-
    bach checked his wristwatch, but Aachener didn't look away
    when Cris's eyes met his; judging from the leer on his face ' he
    must have been watching her the entire time she had been
    wearing nothing but bra and panties.
     He gave her a salacious wink, and it was Ryer's turn to
    blush and avoid eye-contact. There were also times, she re-
    flected, when she was goddamned glad to be gay.
     As she bent to try on the pair of high-top sneakers she found
    in the locker-at least these were too large rather than too
    small-she noticed that the diskette made a slight bulge
    against her left breast. If she could see it, someone else might,
    too. Maybe if she turned around, she might be able to switch
    it from her breast pocket to ...
     Her train of thought was broken as Parnell clapped his
    hands for attention. "Okay, people," he called out. "if you're
    ready, then we're going below."
     Too late. She would just have to hope that no one took a
    close look at her.
     There were muttered comments as everyone picked up the
    gear they had brought with them from Conestoga: Bromleigh
    and Rhodes their airtight camera cases, Dooley his laptop
    computer, Lewitt and Parnell the envelopes containing the

    




    ALLEN STEELE
    
    passwords that the U.S. Government, adding insult to injur
    had denied her.
     Ryer finished lacing up her sneakers, then stood up, empt)
    handed but certainly not empty-pocketed, turned around, an
    fell in behind Parnell as he led the way down to the heart
    the machine.
     So far, so good ...

    




    From "The Lost Frontier" by Ellen Schaeffer, The New Yorker,
    April 30, / 992
    
     The Dole Administration's announced intention to sell Tranquillity
    Base to Koenig Selenen GmbH has been largely dismissed by the shrink-
    'no cadre of space supporters as a wholly political decision, a blatant
    b
    attempt at populism made in an election year by a Presidency which was
    clearly losing ground to the opposition. To be sure, there's some truth to
    this allegation: Dole was clearly embarrassed by the revelation that he
    had authorized the first-use of the Teal Falcon nuclear arsenal during
    Desert Storm. He attempted to soothe the public by shutting down Tran-
    quillity Base, but by then the scandal was out of control; the only possible
    recourse was to sell the abandoned base to the Germans, in effect wash-
    
    ing his hands of the entire matter.
    
     But what space advocates neglect to mention, perhaps even purpose-
    fully, is that almost none of Dole's election opponents have come to the
    defense of Tranquillity Base, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, the apparent
    Democratic front-runner after Super Tuesday, has actually gone on re-
    cord to support the White House decision, albeit in terrns of widespread
    military cutbacks. Senator Albert Gore, Senator Paul Simon, and Senator
    
    Tom Harkin have remained mute on the nuestion
    
    q Former California governor Jerry Brown alone has opposed selling
    Tranquillity Base. He proposes that the United States use the base for
    exactly the same purposes as Koenig Selenen intends: as a lunar mining
    colony and, in the long run, as a site for disposal of high-level radioactive
    wastes from the same nuclear power plants that Brown says should be
    shut down. The only difference between Dole's stance and Brown's is
    that Brown wants to keep business within the United States; however,
    no American corporation has any interest in pursuing high-risk space en-
    terpr~ise, while Koenig Selenen is clearly gearing up to accept Dole's offer.
     The majority of voters aren't paying much attention to Governor
    Brown's counterproposal, except perhaps as another indication of how
    radical his campaign has become. The pro-space constituency is small,
    and not a particularly vocal one at that; all it takes to overwhelm their
    plaintive cries for the renewal of the sixties-era "High Frontier" is the
    
    mention of a sin le word: deficit
    
     That word alone is a massive, towering obstacle which none of the
    other candidates are willing to assault. Myopic or not, both parties agree

    




    236
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    that selling Tr-anquillity Base is a certain way of reducing the deficit, even
    though the base absorbed less than three percent of the federal budget
    when it was operational. It's a visible target, it's politically incorrect, and ~
    makes for a great sound-bite on the evening news. It takes at least sixty
    seconds to give good reasons for keeping Tranquillity Base in American
    hands; a candidate's opposition to Tranquillity Base-"Let's sell the moon
    base, and sell it now!"-takes only two seconds before the network affil-
    iates cut to commercials.
     And this is the way we've reached the end of America's greatest
    dream, the conquest of space. Bom out of WoHd War 11, nourished by
    the Cold War, matured by grand visions of permanently settling the
    Moon and Mars ... now relegated to the retirement home like a dodder-
    ing grandfather who thinks Eisenhower is still President and his grown-up
    children haven't started dating yet, And the children, entranced with the
    instant gratification supplied by new toys like home-computer networks,.
    virtual reality, and fifty cable channels of reruns, are only too willing to let
    Gr-amps die so they can inhe6t his money and fight over the silverware,
     The dream will continue. Men and women will still explore space. The
    frontier has been broken; like any human frontier that has ever existed, it
    will never be abandoned. Mankind has never turned its back on any place
    it has visited at least once. We have an innate urge to explore new
    worids, no matter how far away they may be, or how hostile the environ-
    ment. Like it or not, It's part of our genetic makeup.
     However, if anyone in America still wishes to visit the Moon within
    the next decade, they are advised to learn another language, and get a
    passport.

    




    E-1-G-H-T-E-E-N
    
    2/19195 - 1050 GMT
    
                         he launch center was located
    on Level 3A, a bowl-shaped room at the bottom of Unit A
    with fluorescent lights suspended from a low ceiling and its
    ladder placed between a pair of auxiliary control panels. Like
    the airlock on Level 1A, it was not made to hold nine people
    at once; getting everyone in there was a tight squeeze, made
    even tighter once Bromleigh began to set up his camera tripod
    in the back of the room.
     The firing room was dominated by two identical consoles
    positioned fifteen feet apart, their swivel-mounted armchairs
    at right angles to one another. The consoles were lined with
    buttons and toggle switches surrounding a pair of computer
    screens, with six TV monitors arrayed above the consoles. On
    the wall between the two consoles was a small steel cabinet,
    sealed with two locks.
     Once Parnell found the main fuse box and powered up the
    room, the consoles glowed like Christmas trees and the
    screens lit up with images relayed from TV cameras posi-
    tioned in and around the crater. Like an ICBM bunker in Mis-
    souri, the firing room could be sealed off during a red alert, its
    only remaining contact a scrambled radio channel with Earth.
     Once he was seated at the right-hand console, Parnell
    opened the secure KU-band channel to the Wheel. Main-Ops

    




    238
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    in turn relayed the transmission to Houston, where a group
    of SAC officers and inspectors from the International Atorhic
    Energy Agency were waiting at Mission Control. When he
    achieved contact with the Von Braun Space Center, Gene un-
    sealed the manila envelope Ray Harvey had given him at the
    Cape and read the authentication password typed across the
    first sheet of paper.
     We copy, Teal Falcon, an anonymous voice replied from a
    quarter of a million miles away. Foxtrot Nebraska Romeo,
    one-zero-niner, affirmative. Can you give us status of the
    birds, please?
     "Roger that, Mission." Parnell reached across the board and
    pressed a set of six buttons.
     The TV monitors flickered and fuzzed, then settled into
    fish-eye views from within the silos on the other side of the
    crater. The blunt noses of six Minuteman missiles protruded
    from the deep mooncrete pits in which they were nestled,
    held in place by vertical rows of metal flanges. Electrical ca-
    bles led from the silo walls to the rockets; since the silo covers
    had not yet been raised, the missiles were illuminated by red
    fluorescent lights that cast dark shadows across their sleek
    fuselages.
     Parnell's eyes swept across the screens, his board, and the
    CRTs. Nothing seemed amiss. The missiles appeared to be the
    way he had last seen them; nothing had degraded during their
    long slumber. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad news.
     "All missiles are intact and ready for launch," he said.
    "Awaiting authorization to proceed to standby."
     We copy, Teal Falcon, the voice responded. IAEA conc
    with your findings. You have SAC authorization to proceed t,
    standby status. T-minus one hour, five minutes and counting,
    over.
     "Roger that, Mission," Parnell said. "We're commencing
    final power-up and activation of launch control systems.
    Over."
     He took off the headset and placed it on the desk in front of
    him, then got up from the chair. "Mr. Dooley?" he said, look-
    ing over his shoulder. "It's your turn."

    




    i
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    239
    
     "About time," Dooley murmured as he traded places with
    Parnell. "I was beginning to feel like a tourist."
     Parnell said nothing. He leaned over the back of the chair,
    studying Dooley as he placed his laptop computer on the desk
    and unfolded its screen. While Dooley pried open the back of
    the CPU and pulled a rolled cable out of his equipment case,
    Parnell glanced around, surreptitiously noting everyone's po-
    sition in the firing room.
     Jay Lewitt was seated at the left-hand console, watching
    Dooley as he interfaced his Tandy/IBM to the master fire-
    control system through the right console's serial port. Cris
    Ryer stood directly behind Lewitt, observing everything that
    was going on. In the back of the room, Alex Bromleigh had set
    up his camera and was fiddling with the lens; Berkley Rhodes
    was helping out by running a coaxial cable to the main com-
    munications panel on Lewitt's board. According to their
    agreement with NASA, the ATS news team would not trans-
    mit live pictures until after the missiles were fired; before
    then, they could only record the launch procedure.
 Markus Talsbach lingered near the ladder, his arms folded
       s his chest. Curiously, there was no sign of either Uwe
       ener or James Leamore.
     "Mr. Talsbach?" Parnell asked, and the German astronaut
    looked up. "Where are your friends?"
     "Eh?" Talsbach raised his eyebrows and cocked his head.
    "Ali! Oh, they have gone elsewhere, I think."
     "You think?" He was beginning to wonder if Talsbach was
    twice the idiot he seemed to be. "There's not too many places
    they could have gone, Markus. Where did they go?"
     "Oh! Ahh ... James needed to find the . . ." He seemed to
    be searching for the correct word. "The levorotary, I believe.
    Uive decided to go with him, in order to look at the rest of the
    base." He frowned. "Is this wrong? Should I go in search of
    them?
    ~.acros
    Aach
    
     Parnell shook his head. "No ... I just wish they had told me
    where they were headed, that's all."
     In fact, he didn't care to have anyone out of sight just now.
    The head was located in Unit B, on the other side of the bun-
    ker; that was a long way from the firing room. Parnell's first

    




    dr
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    impulse was to go looking for Leamore and Aachener, bi
    when he glanced down at Dooley again, he saw that tl
    hacker had already linked up with the main computer syster
     "Okay, here we go." Dooley rapidly typed a set of cor
    mands into his computer. As he did, the CRTs on his conso
    and Lewitt's simultaneously began to scroll long lists of pr
    gram code. "Yeah, baby," he whispered to himself as he e
    gerly watched the screen in front of him, his finge
    periodically stabbing at the keys. "Go, mama, go . .
     "What's happening?" Parnell asked.
     "I'm reintroducing my buddy to his long-lost brothei
    Dooley blinked from behind his glasses as he looked up
    Parnell. "I'm matching my half of the c-cube codes with t'.
    ones Teal Falcon has in memory. When they've finished sha
    ing hands, we'll be ready to go ahead with the rest of the
    quence."
     "I see." It was a simplistic explanation, but it matched wl.
    Parnell had been told during his briefings. Once the two s(
    of programs were matched and final authentication was :
    ceived from Houston, he and Lewitt would be able to proce
    with electrical check-out and the arming and targeting of t
    Minutemen.
     So far, everything was going according to plan. In only
    hour, the President would go on live network television, ma
    his carefully scripted statement to the nation and the wor
    then push a button on the Oval Office desk. A few secor
    later, Parnell and Lewitt would receive the green light fr(
    Houston. A final twist of a pair of keys, and the birds woi
    leave their nests.
     The only thing stopping him were a few suspicions cast
    a couple of civilians, and who were they? A college kid on i
    Wheel and an ill woman somewhere in Arizona: All they 1.
    for proof were a couple of strange conversations on a priv~
    computer network and the coincidental murder of a pizza,
    livery boy.
     Insane ...
     Sure, Joe Laughlin thought there was something amiss, I
    Joe could be wrong. just as Parnell himself could be wrong

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    241
    
    believing any one of them. Did he really want to end his career
    by screwing up to this magnitude?
     "Okay!" Dooley's shout interrupted his thoughts. "We're
    in!" He looked up at Parnell. "All systems are nominal, Com-
    mander. It's all yours."
     Parnell sucked in his breath as he stood erect. "Well done,
    Paul. My compliments."
     Lewitt dipped his head and pulled the key from around his
    neck. "Anytime you're ready, Commander," he said, jingling
    the key in his hand. "Let's-get it on the road."
     "Sure, Jay." Parnell checked the digital chronometer be-
    tween the two launch stations. The clock stood at 1110 Zulu.
     just enough time for him to take a reality check ...
     "I'm going topside for a see," he said to no one in particular
    as he stepped away from the chair. "Nature's calling."
     Rhodes looked up from her work. "You're going to worry
    about that now?"
     "Jesus, I don't believe it . Dooley irritably rubbed his
    mouth. "You picked a fine time to take a whizz, man."
     Lewitt seemed equally baffled, but he gave his commander
    an amused grin. "Hell of a time for a pee-break."
     "We're running ahead of schedule." Parnell managed a
    sheepish shrug and grin as he headed for the hatch. Talsbach
    said nothing as he stepped aside. "Might as well take care of
    business. Excuse me . . ."
      Then he began to climb up the ladder to Level 2A.
    
     The logistics compartment was vacant. This shouldn't have
    troubled Parnell, but it did.
     He walked softly past the computers to the lateral hatch
    leading to Unit B. The hatch cover was still open; light glowed
    from the opposite end of the fifteen-foot connecting tunnel.
    When he bent over and listened carefully, though, he could
    hear no sound from the crew quarters on the other side of the
    bunker.
     "Hello?" he called. "Anyone there?"
     No one answered. Of course, that could mean nothing. The
    head was located on Level 1B, one deck up in the second

    




    242
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    sphere. They might not have heard him. For all he kn(
    Leamore and Aachener could be raiding the galley fridge.
     His first impulse was to enter the tunnel and go investig
    their prolonged absence. He bent low, raised his right foot -
    set it in the tunnel ... then stopped himself. His first prioi
    should be to return to the firing room, where he could kee
    close eye on Dooley and Ryer.
     He reminded himself that he had left the unsealed laul
    codes on the desk in front of the right-hand firing consi
    That was stupid; although the missiles couldn't be armc(
    launched without the key which still hung around his nc
    someone could nevertheless make use of the authenticato
     He couldn't be in two places at once.
     He hoped he was only being paranoid.
     Parnell reluctantly turned away from the tunnel andw
    back to the ladder. Before he set foot on the first rung, thoi
    he reached behind the adjacent mainframe and retrieved
    Colt from its hiding place.
     He chambered a round and flipped off the safety, then c
    fully slipped the pistol into the right pocket of his jump~
    It made a slight bulge and the handle stuck out a little
    would have to be careful to conceal it.
     He took a deep breath, then climbed back down the la
    into the control room.
    Dooley was still sitting at the right-hand console, sloui
    over the keyboard of his computer, which was still conne
    t-_var-n-ell noted that Rver had left Lewitt's
    she was now standing above Dooley, intently watching
    he was doing. She looked up as Parnell reenter6d the corr
    ment, but Dooley either didn't notice his return or ignor
     Ryer started to step away from the chair, but Gene v
     her off, mindful to use his left hand while keeping his
     hand close to his pocket, hiding the butt of the gun, "I
     mind," he said, walking past her toward Lewitt's seat. "I
     I'll run the left seat instead. Can you hand me the, env
     please? "
      Cris blinked, but said nothing; she merely picked i
     envelope-which had apparently gone undisturbed duri
     absence-and passed it to him.

    




    V,
    
    .c
    Ld
    ~y
     a
    
    -h
    e.
    or
    k,
    
    nt
    he
    
    [er
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    243
    
    .ed
    ed
    le;
    iat
    rt-
    it.
    red
    ,h
    ver
    nk
    pe,
    
    the
    his
    
     Jay looked bewildered as Parnell approached his console,
    but he didn't protest. "Any particular reason, Commander?"
    he asked as he surrendered his chair to Parnell.
     "Kind of drafty over there, that's all." Gene pointed to an
    air duct above the right console. "I was getting chills sitting
    there. Hope you don't mind switching, but. . . "
     "Naw, that's okay. I don't think it matters much anyway."
    And it didn't; in terms of function, the consoles mirrored one
    another. However, Parnell wanted to be able to keep an eye
    on Dooley and Ryer without turning his head ... and from the
    left console he would be able to get a clean shot at either or
    both of them, if push came to shove.
     "Don't forget this." Parnell picked up Lewitt's envelope and
    handed it to him as he slid past. As Lewitt took the envelope,
    Parnell leaned a little closer to him.
     "Watch 'em," he whispered.
     Jay nodded very slightly, then strode over to the right con-
    sole. Dooley had already vacated the chair; he pushed aside
    his laptop computer to make room for Lewitt, but he re-
    mained close to the console. it was a little crowded at that
    end of the room, but, Parnell noted, Ryer didn't stray from the
    console, either.
     The chronometer now stood at 1131 Zulu. Less than a half -
    hour remained before launch.
     Sitting down, Parnell glanced over his shoulder toward the
    back of the control room. Bromleigh stood behind his camera,
    ready to begin filming the operation; Rhodes was next to him,
    absently fiddling with the lapel mike on her jumpsuit collar.
    Talsbach stood near the ladder, seemingly bored with the
    whole procedure.
     Still no sign of either Leamore or Aachener. There was
    nothing Parnell could do about that now.
      "Ready to go, Commander?" Jay asked.
     "Yup. Let's get to it." Parnell clamped the headset around
    the back of his neck and adjusted the mike, then switched the
    coinlink to the secure frequency he had used earlier. "Hous-
    ton, this is Teal Falcon. All systems nominal. We're ready to
    begin pre-launch sequence."
      The usual five-second delay, then the same anonymous

    




    16~. I
    
    244
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    voice he had heard before came on-line. Roger that, Teal Fal-
    con. Stand by to receive authentication code, over.
     Parnell picked up the manila envelope, opened it again, and
    pulled out a red letter-sized envelope printed with official
    threats regarding stiff prison sentences if opened without
    proper authorization. As Lewitt did the same, he tore off one
    end of the envelope and withdrew a short slip of paper. "Hous-
    ton, we're ready to receive authenticator," he said.
     Teal Falcon, this is Houston. The authenticator is ...
     Parnell stole a sidelong glance at Dooley. He was bent over
    his computer, resting his hands on the edge of the desk. His
    right hand wasn't touching the keyboard, but it was uncom-
    fortably close.
     Rattrap, Parnell reminded himself. This is a rattrap .
     Bravo ... Zulu ... Tango ... six . . . three ... seven . .
    Alpha ... Romeo ... Nebraska. Do you copy? Over.
     The authenticator matched the large red code-sign printed
    on Parnell's slip: BZT 63 7 ARN. He held the paper up for Lew-
    itt to read and Jay reciprocated. The codes were identical.
     "We copy, Houston," Parnell said. "Authentication re-
    ceived and confirmed by Lieutenant Lewitt and myself. Pro-
    ceeding with pre-launch sequence. Over."
     He pulled off the headset and stood, then reached up to pull
    the long key chain from around his neck. Lewitt did the same;
    they leaned across their desks until they were both able to fit
    their keys into the locks of the steel cabinet between their
    consoles.
     A quick twist of each key opened the locks; the lid swurj
    down, revealing another pair of keys, these oversized and
    painted red.
     "Do you concur with launch?" Parnell asked.
     "Yes, sir," Lewitt said formally. "I concur with launch."
     It was all part of the apocalyptic waltz of nuclear warfare.
    Neither man could launch the missiles on his own; both had
    to receive and match the authenticator codes, both had to
    open the cabinet and take the launch control keys; once in-
    serted in the consoles, both keys had to be turned within five
    seconds of each other for the missiles to be fired. The two
    master consoles had been deliberately positioned far enough

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    245
    
    apart to guarantee that one man in the bunker couldn't go
    crazy and launch the missiles on his own.
     Parnell sat down again. He flipped open a small zebra-
    striped panel on his console and inserted his key. The switch
    had three positions: OFF, STANDBY, and LAUNCH. He waited until
    Lewitt had done the same; then he said, "On my mark
    three . . . two ... one ... mark."
     "Mark," Lewitt said, and simultaneously twisted his key
    clockwise to STANDBY.
     Orange lamps on their consoles switched to amber. The
    CRTs began to display line columns of type, showing the
    status of each missile in its silo. A red-bordered warning
    across the bottom of their screens told them that the Minute-
    men were ready to be armed.
     Curtsy and bow. The danse macabre had begun.
    
     "Go with pre-launch ignition," Parnell says. His hands
    move quickly across his console, flicking toggle switches in
    succession.
     "Roger that," Lewitt says. "Commencing pre-launch igni-
    tion sequence."
     Vertical bars rise on their screens, telling them that the
    Minutemen's solid rocket engines are being armed. "Primary
    electrical check," Parnell says, flipping another set of
    switches.
     "Roger on primary electrical." Lewitt carefully watches an-
    other screen as the missiles are powered up. "All missiles on
    external power. Umbilical source nominal, internal batteries
    on storage mode, green for go."
     "Roger that. Standby for primary gyro check."
     Reviving the missiles doesn't take very long; the last crew
    to visit Teal Falcon, three years ago, left the missiles in pre-
    launch status, just in case the CINC changed his mind about
    Baghdad's fate. As he and Lewitt run through the checklist,
    though, Parnell watches Dooley out of the corner of his eye.
     The younger man has stood behind Lewitt the entire time,
    never moving far from his laptop computer. Ryer, on the other
    hand, has silently moved to stand directly behind Parnell; he

    




    246
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    can see her reflection in the glass of the computer screen in
    front of him.
     "Gyros green," Lewitt replies. "All onboard systems check
    out and we're green for go. Ready to load targeting instruc-
    tions."
     "Roger that." Now comes the tricky part: inserting the
    flight parameters and trajectories into the onboard guidance
    computers of the six missiles. Parnell types a set of commands
    on his keyboard; the screen changes to display the empty grid
    for the targeting system. He turns the pages of his notebook
    until he finds the list of numbers which, once entered into the
    computer, will send the Minutemen straight toward the Sun.
     As he begins to carefully type the figures into the computer,
    he notices that Dooley's right hand has innocuously moved to
    the keyboard of his laptop. Trying not to appear as if he's doing
    anything, Dooley is quietly entering his own commands into,
    the computer.
     The rat has sniffed the bait.
     Parnell doesn't say anything. Lewitt hasn't noticed what'
    going on behind his back; he is too busy making certain that
    the missiles are ready for launch.
     Parnell glances at the chronometer. T-minus nine minutes,
    thirty-two seconds and counting.
     He finishes entering the codes into the computer, but before
    he transmits them to the missiles, he sneaks another glance
    at Dooley. The other man's right hand is lingering near the
    ENTER button on his own computer; he appears to be waiting
    for Parnell to finish the job, so he can ...
     "Gene? Are you ready?"
     Lewitt's waiting for him. Everyone is waiting for him. Espe.'
    cially Dooley, who is prepared to secretly alter the trajectory
    of one or more of the missiles with a touch of a button.
     "Sure." Parnell tries to sound relaxed. He raises his hand to
    his keyboard. "Targeting instructions entered and loaded. . ."
     He pretends to hit his own ENTER key. At that instant,
    Dooley taps his keyboard.
     The numbers on Parnell's screen subtly change of their own
    accord.
     The trap has been sprung.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    247
    
     Parnell leaps to his feet, his right hand diving into the
    pocket of his jumpsuit. He whips the gun out of the pocket;
    kicking the chair aside, he brings the Colt into two-handed
    firing position, aiming straight at Dooley.
    "Freeze!" he shouts.
     Startled, Dooley jumps back from his computer, his eyes
    wide with astonishment. Lewitt's mouth falls open as he sees
    the weapon in Parnell's hand.
     Behind him, he hears Ryer moving. Pivoting on his hips,
    Parnell points the automatic at her; the barrel is only a couple
    of feet from her face.
    "You too!" he shouts. "Back off! Keep your hands in sight!"
     She can't say anything, although her face has gone pale. She
    stands still, her hands half-raised above her waist.
     Behind her, Bromleigh is just beginning to react. He points
    the camera in their direction, trying to get everything on film.
     Rhodes is the first to say anything. "What the hell is
    going ... ?"
     "Shut up!" Parnell takes a deep breath. "I'll tell you in a
    minute. Ryer, move back ... way back." He jerks the gun
    back toward Dooley. "You, too. Keep your hands where I can
    see'em..."
     Dooley slowly raises his hands to shoulder level. "What the
    fuck is going on here?" he demands, his voice high and qua-
    vering. "I haven't. . . "
      "Just keep your hands in sight." Parnell carefully steps
    away from the console. Blood jackhammers in his ears; he
    quickly points the gun at Ryer again. "Over there, kiddo. Next
    to your buddy."
      Hands still half-raised, Ryer begins to slowly move back-
    ward on leaden feet. "Gene . . .
      "Shut up."
      "Gene." Her voice is soft; she's trying to reason with him.
    "I don't know what you're talking about, but this is . . . "
      "Shut up. Put your hands on top of your head. Both of you."
    He inches past the camera tripod, careful not to stumble over
    its legs. Out of the comer of his eye, he can see Talsbach
    standing frozen against the wall.
      Lewitt rises from his chair. "What did he do, Gene?" he

    




    248
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    asks, his eyes darting toward Dooley. "I'm sorm but I couldr]
    keep my eye on him."
     Ryer is almost next to Dooley now; both of them have the
    hands clasped on top of their heads. "Just what I thought I
    was going to do," Parnell murmurs, keeping the gun train(
    on the pair. "He entered new coordinates in the targeting sy
    tem. I caught him doing it a second ago."
     Dooley's entire body seems to tremble. "That's ... that's
    bunch of shit!" he starnmers. "I didn't do a goddamn thing
    He glances helplessly at Lewitt. "He's out of his fuckii
    mind, man!"
     "Gene," Ryer says, "I've got nothing to do with this,
    swear. . ."
     "Shut up." Parnell keeps walking toward Dooley and Ryt
    marching them backward at gunpoint. He's past the came
    now, but there's some cold comfort to be had in the fact th
    Bromleigh has captured the entire scene on film. "You're in
    with him. I didn't figure it out until. . . "
     He stops, taking another breath. The situation is under cc
    trol. "We'll get it straightened out later. Right now, I wa
    both of you on the floor, facedown."
     "Commander, what the ... ?" Rhodes gets hold of herse
    "What's going on here? What are these people being charg
    with? "
     Ryer is already clumsily bending to her knees, hands st
    laced together above her head. "Commander, this is nuts..
     Dooley is on the verge of panic; his Adam's apple bobs
    his eyes shift left and right. "Holy fuckin' Jesus ... he's go
    crazy!" He glances at Bromleigh. "Are you getting this, I
    chrissakes?"
     "We've got everything," Bromleigh says from behind t
    camera. " Oh my God, Berk..."
     "Keep shooting, Alex." Rhodes has regained her profi
    sional composure. "Commander Parnell, why have y
    stopped the countdown? Why are you holding these people
    gunpoint? "
     Calm down, calm down. Everything's under control. You
    on camera; when this tape is transmitted back to Missi
    Control, you can't afford to look like a lunatic.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    249
    
     "Mr. Dooley and Captain Rhodes are part of a conspiracy to
    take control of the missiles," he begins. "They're-"
     At that instant, he feels the hard muzzle of a gun press
    against the back of his head.
     "Drop your weapon," Talsbach says from behind him, "or I
    shall shoot."
     Parnell feels his blood turn to ice water.
     His finger involuntarily relaxes inside the trigger guard.
    Even then, the cold sensation of the gun at his head isn't half
    as bad as what he feels a moment later when Lewitt steps
    forward, lays his hand atop the Colt, and removes it from his
    grasp.
     "Actually," Jay says without a trace of irony, "you're only
    half-right. "

    





    




     WASHINGTON D.C.-President Bill Clinton will give a live televised
    address today from the Oval Office at the White House, scheduled for
    7:00 A.m. Eastern time, during which he will issue the final launch-and-
    destruct order for the six Minuteman 11 nuclear missiles stored inside a
    crater in the Sea of Tranquillity on the Moon,
     The six missiles were placed on the Moon in 1969, prior to the United
    States signing of the United Nations Space Treaty of 1992, which out-
    lawed the use of such weapons. All six missiles will be launched on a
    
    From The Associated Press (Le Matrix on-line news service);
    February 19, 1995, 6:00 A.m. EST
    
    trajectory that will send them into the Sun.
     An eight-member international expedition, comprising American, Ger-
    man, and English astronauts, landed on the Moon earlier today at 2:01
    A.M. Eastern time. A spokesman at NASA's Von Braun Space Center in
    Houston, Texas, reports that the astronauts have already entered the
    once-secret launch bunker, code-named Teal Falcon, inside Sabine Crater
    nine miles from the closed-down United States moonbase.
     The expedition is being led by Commander Eugene Parnell, who was
    in charge of the U.S. Space Force's Luna Two mission which placed the
    missiles on the Moon in 1969,
     After the missiles are launched, the astronauts will journey back to
    Tranquillity Base, where they will prepare to hand over the base to the
     rman space corporation Koenig Selenen GmbH. The corporation in-
    
     ds to use the site for industrial operations; the abandoned Teal Falcon
    ilos are expected to'be turned into a disposal site for high-level nuclear
    wastes
     "This marks the final end of the Cold War," says Presidential advisor
    George Stepenopolous. "When the Minutemen have been destroyed,
    our friends in the global community will have certain proof that the
    United States does not intend to wage nuclear war without provocation."
     President Clinton's remarks will be carried live on CNN and ATS. Fol-
    lowing the successful launch of the missiles, ATS will broadcast a live
    report from the Teal Falcon launch bunker.
    
    I

    




    N - I - N - E - T - E - E - N
    
    I d
    
    2/19/95 - I I S2 GMT
    
    ind if I ask why?" Parnell
    
    asked.
     Lewitt calmly nodded. Unlike Talsbach, who had a smug
    grin on his face, at least he refrained from gloating. While the
    German astronaut kept everyone in the firing room at gun-
    point, Lewitt quickly checked the Colt's six-round clip; satis-
    fied that it was fully loaded, he looked past Parnell at
    Bromleigh and Rhodes.
     "Turn off your camera,".he said. "In fact, unplug it from the
    communications board ... carefully, please." As Bromleigh
    switched off the Sony, Rhodes walked to the communications
    panel and, under Talsbach's watchful eye, yanked the cable
    free.
     "Thanks," Lewitt said. He stepped away from Parnell, still
    keeping the gun leveled at him. He looked at Dooley and si-
    lently cocked his head toward the left console; Dooley slipped
    around Parnell and sat down in the chair the commander had
    just vacated. "Now everyone just stay calm," Lewitt contin-
    ued. "If you cooperate, no one gets hurt and everything's going
    to be okay."
     Parnell sincerely doubted he was telling the truth, but
    wouldn't do anyone much good to raise the issue. "Yo

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    253
    
    haven't answered my question," he said, ignoring Dooley as
    he kept his eye on Lewitt.
     Lewitt looked at him askance. "C'mon, Gene. You don't
    really expect me to tell you, do you?" He smiled and shook
    his head. "We're after the nukes. That's all you need to know
    right now.//
     Which was exactly the reason why Parnell didn't believe
    Lewitt's assertion that no one would be hurt if they cooper-
    ated. The stakes were much too high for witnesses to be left
    alive. For the moment, though, he wanted to keep Lewitt talk-
    ing, if only to buy them a little more time.
     "That's not what I meant," he said. "What I want to know
    is why you're involved." He nodded toward Ryer, who was
    still crouched on her knees, her hands on her head. "After all,
    I thought Cris here was the mole. You're a surprise."
     "That explains a lot," Ryer murmured. It was difficult to
    tell who angered her more, Lewitt or Parnell.
     "Oh, I see." Lewitt shrugged slightly. "Well, let's put it this
    way ... if you hadn't screwed things up just now, I'd be several
    million dollars richer and no one would have been the wiser.
    Now I'll just have to settle for a million bucks. Put your hands
    on top of your head."
     Despite fear, Parnell managed a smile of his own. "Gosh,
    Jay," he said as he slowly raised his hands and folded them
    atop his head, "that's disappointing. If you're going to be a
    traitor, you might as well be a good traitor and do it for politi-
    cal reasons. Selling out for cash is pretty lame, don't you
    think? I I
     The smile disappeared from Lewitt's face, replaced by a dark
    scowl. "Don't push your luck, Gene," he said softly.
     "What's going on here?" Rhodes demanded. She was stand-
    ing next to Bromleigh again; although Talsbach hadn't ordered
    the reporters to do so, they had also placed their hands on top
    of their heads. Talsbach stood in front of them, his back to
    Dooley. "If you're going to issue some sort of ultimatum, we'll
    need to reconnect the camera and. . . "
      "There's not going to be any ultimatum," Lewitt said, his

    




    254
    
    i
    
    I
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    eyes darting toward Rhodes. "That's not what's going on here
    ... and don't even think about turning on the camera."
     "But ... 11
     "Just shut up, okay? All of you." Parnell and Ryer fell silent,
    both avoiding each other's eyes, as Lewitt glanced toward
    Dooley. "Cecil? Time?"
     "T-minus six minutes, twenty-three seconds." Dooley, or
    whoever he really was, had pulled on the headset and was
    watching the screens. "The new trajectory for number six is
                      it
    loaded. We're ready to ...
     He stopped, raising his right hand to cup the headset more
    firmly against his ear. He listened intently for a moment, then
    looked up at Lewitt. "Houston's back on the line. They want
    a status check."
     "Shit. .."
     "Plan beginning to unravel a little, huh, Jay?" Parnell
    shrugged offhandedly. "Put me on, old buddy. I'll tell 'em ev-
    erything's okay."
     "Fuck off." For the first time since he had taken the gun
    away from him, Lewitt was beginning to sweat. He carefully
    stepped sideways to the right-hand console, his left hand feel-
    ing for his headset. "Hang on, I'll take. . .
     At that moment, the lights went out.
    
     As the control room was plunged into darkness, it seemed
    as if everyone shouted mindlessly at once. Parnell instinc
    tively froze for a moment ... then he ducked and simultaile
    ously dived through the blackness straight for where Le-,Nlilt
    had been standing a moment earlier.
     A gun fired somewhere just above his head; the muzzle
    flash dazzled him. For an instant, he thought he'd been hit ...
     A woman screamed, then Parnell slammed headfirst into
    a body that cushioned his impact with the hard mooncrete
    floor.
     Ryer gasped beneath him, the breath punched out of her'
    lungs. Parnell rolled off her at the same moment Lewitt fired
    again, his second shot ricocheting with a spang! off something
    metallic.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    255
    
     In the second flash, Parnell caught the briefest glimpse
    Rhodes sagging against the far wall ...
     Talsbach howled something in German and fired his ow
    gun in some wild direction. Parnell couldn't see where it hi
    but from somewhere close to his left he heard Lewitt:
     "Goddammit, stop ... !"
     Parnell lashed out with his right leg, kicking blindly in t
    direction of Lewitt's voice. His foot connected with soft fles
    he heard a harsh grunt, but as he pulled his leg back for a
    other kick, Lewitt fired once more, again at close range.
     Miraculously, the bullet missed him; it whizzed as it spl
    the air somewhere just past his right ear. Dooley was yellir
    incoherently at the top of his lungs; there was a loud crash
    the TV camera toppled over.
     "There!" Talsbach shouted. "He's there, in front of-!"
     Another gunshot, then a loud crash which sprayed gla
    across the room: a TV monitor had been shot out. At th
    same instant, a hand grabbed Parnell's arm and wrested hi
    aside.
     His head slammed against the bottom of a chair; witho
    thinking, he grabbed it with both hands and hurled it as ha
    as he could in Lewitt's direction.
     He heard a grunt as the chair connected with someon
    something metallic clattered to the floor about six feet awa
    Thinking it was the pistol, Parnell clawed for it ...
     "Fuck, stop shooting!" Dooley shouted.
     A gun roared, this time from the other side of the roo
    Pamell reflexively ducked; as he did, he felt Ryer's hands gra
    bing at his shoulders.
     "The hatch!" she gasped in his ear. "Get to the hatch!"
     The hatch? What the hell was she ... ?
     Right. The ceiling hatch. The ladder was only a few fe
    away. Forgetting about the dropped gun, Parnell struggled
    his hands and knees and began scrambling across the co
     floor toward a dim oval of light. Ryer was directly in front
     him, making for the same target.
     "Goddarnmit!" Dooley yelled. "Fuck! Fuck, shit, fuck. I')
     got somebody bleeding on-!"
     "Shut up!" Talsbach shouted. "Uwe! Where are you?//

    




    256
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     Ryer reached the bottom of the ladder, but instead of gr
    bing the rungs, she crouched and leaped straight up. For a
    ment, it seemed to Parnell that she had learned how to
    the last thing he saw of her was her legs and feet disappear
    through the hatch.
     "Fuck him!" Lewitt hollered from somewhere back in
    darkness. "They're getting away-!"
     "Don't shoot!" Dooley yelled. "Don't shoot! You'll hit-
     Parnell didn't wait for them to make up their minds.
    grasped the ladder, crouched low, then sprang upwards as f
    as he could, letting the lunar one-sixth gravity do the re
    There was another gunshot as he soared upwards, bypassi
    the ladder as he hurtled out of the control room.
     The sudden glare of the overhead lights made him win
    but he barely had time to raise his hands to his eyes bef
    someone grabbed his arms and yanked him the rest of the
    out of the hatch ...
     "C'mon, goddammit! Move your silly arse!"
     Then he was shoved away from the hatch by a pair of stro
    arms. As he sprawled painfully across the floor, a gun
    fired from somewhere above him.
     Blinking furiously, he managed to clear his vision enou
    to see James Leamore crouched above the hatch, firing a Glo
    17 down into the control room. As Parnell fought to get
    Leamore kicked the hatch cover into place.
     "You? " Parnell gasped. "What the hell is-?"
     "No time for that!" Leamore backed away from the hatc
    reaching down to pull Ryer to her feet. "They'll have tho
    lights back on in a second! Now up the ladder, both of yo
    Move!"
     As Parnell got to his feet, Ryer grabbed the bottom rung
    the ladder leading up to the airlock deck. Suddenly, s
    seemed to think better of it. "Just a sec," she said, th
    dropped off the ladder and dashed across the compartment
    a computer terminal near the far wall.
     There was a dull pounding against the bottom of the contr
    room hatch. "We haven't got time for that, you silly bitch
    Leamore shouted, close to panic. "They're going to be up he
    in-!//

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    257
    
     "Where's Aachener?" Parnell demanded.
     "Out cold and trussed up like a Christmas goose." Leamore
    was still watching the hatch. "Where do you think I got this
    
    gun? Ryer, dammit-!"
    
     "Shut up!" Ryer unzipped a breast pocket of her jumpsuit
    and pulled out a diskette. Parnell had just enough time to rec-
    ognize it as the same 3,5-inch diskette he had briefly glimpsed
    aboard Conestoga, then she slapped it into the terminal's
    floppy drive. She taived several kevs on the COMDuter waited
    
    f
    
    a few seconds until a line of tvDe aDDeared on the monitor
    
    then yanked it back out of the comvuter.
    
    "Okay, let's get out of here!" she snapped, turning around
    
    and running back to the ladder
    
     Parnell didn't ask what she had done; there wasn't enough
    time. As Leamore covered them, he scurried up the ladder be-
    hind Rver He had iust entered the ton deck when he heard a
    
    shout from below, followed by a gunshot
    
    "Leamore! " he shouted
    
     A few moments passed, then Leamore clambered up the lad-
    der, the Glock still gripped in his right hand. "That'll hold
    
    'em for a few more minutes," he said as he slammed the sec-
    ond hatch shut, "but they'll figure out things soon enough.
    
    Now suit up, both of you ... I'll hold down the fort."
    
     "Will someone please explain what's going on?" Ryer was
    already hauling her hardsuit out of the locker where she had
    
    stowed it.
    
     out of breath, Leamore squatted on his haunches next to
    the hatch. "Certainly, maam," he said, his voice a dry rasp.
    "I'm working for SIS, and your dimwit commander here just
    
    managed to botch an intelligence operation."
    
    Parnell's iaw dropped. "I-?"
    
    "Yes, you flaming idiot," Leamore said, glowering at him.
    
    i'you. I I
    
     Talsbach was still holding onto the ladder ' his gun gripped
    in his right hand as he pressed his ear against the closed hatch.
    "I cannot hear anything," he said as he glanced down at Lew-
    itt. "They've left the second deck, perhaps?"
     "Maybe," Lewitt answered, "but don't try going up again

    




    258
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    until we're sure." just now, Lewitt had more important thing,
    on his mind. Talsbach had located the light switch Leamor(
    had managed to throw; Lewitt was surveying the scene in th(
    firing room. "Shit," he breathed. "Things sure got fucked ul
    in a hurry, didn't they?"
     The compartment was a mess. The TV monitor that ha(
    been shot out by a stray bullet had strewn glass across thi
    consoles. Notebook pages were scattered everywhere, top se
    cret codes and procedures lying on the floor like so mucl
    trash. A chair was overturned; pulling it upright, Lewitt dis
    covered the gun Parnell had managed to dislodge from hi
    hands.
     Worst of all, though, were the two bodies in the far corne
    of the room. Berkley Rhodes was slumped in a sitting positio:
    against the wall, her legs sprawled out before her, her hea
    draping blond hair over the wet red blotch in the middle c
    her chest. In his dying moments, Alex Bromleigh seemed t
    have curled protectively around the ruined camcorder on th
    floor; the bullet that had punctured his left lung had left hir
    staring sightlessly at the firefight that had ended his care(
    and his life.
     "Christ," Lewitt whispered. He stared down at the gun i
    his numb hand, then carefully placed it on the desk. Althoug
    he couldn't be certain, it was possible that it was he himse
    who had killed Rhodes and Bromleigh. "Sorry, guys," he mu
    tered, as much to himself as to the dead man and womaj
    "You were supposed to stay alive. . .
     "Jay! Snap out of it!"
     Lewitt tore his eyes away from the bodies. Paul Dooley-
    Cecil Orvitz, actually, if one cared to use the name on h
    birth certificate-had resumed his seat in front of the lef
    hand firing console.
     "We've got T-minus three minutes and counting," he sai
    as matter-of-fact as if he were discussing a ferry launch froi
    the Cape. "Houston wants to know what's going on up here
     Lewitt took a deep breath. "Did they hear anythin~?" I
    asked, trying to gather his wits.
     Dooley shook his head, and Lewitt turned to the conso
    behind him and picked up the headset, just as he had be(

    




    4; 1
    
    ~gs
    )re
    he
    up
    
    in.
    
    Dle
    ,en
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    259
    
    about to do before all hell broke loose. He held the headset to
    his ear and adjusted the mike, then pushed the vox button.
     "Mission, this is Teal Falcon," he said. "Sorry for the delay,
    but we experienced a small difficulty in the master fire con-
    trol system. Commander Parnell has gone up to the logistics
    deck to correct the problem. Over."
     There was a brief pause, enough time for him to wonder
    whether they had bought the lie; then a voice came over the
    comlink. We copy, Teal Falcon. What's the nature of the prob-
    lem? Over.
     He shot a glance at Dooley; the hacker mouthed something,
    pointing at the CRT in front of him. "It's just a software
    glitch," he replied. "Nothing to be concerned about. We've
    corrected it and are proceeding with countdown as planned."
     Dooley nodded, circling his thumb and index finger. Lewitt
    waited another few seconds before the voice of the Von Braun
    controller responded: We copy, Teal Falcon. Is Commander
    Parnell available?
     "No, Houston, not at this moment," Lewitt said quickly.
    "He's still on the upper deck, making sure that the glitch
    doesn't reoccur." He glanced at the chronometer. "We're at T-
    minus two minutes, twenty seconds. All systems are go for
    launch, and we're not requesting a hold. Repeat, we're go for
    launch, no hold requested. Over."
     He looked back at Dooley, expecting affirmation of his mes-
    sage. Dooley, however, was staring intently at his screen; as
    Lewitt watched, the hacker's fingers raced across the key-
    board, entering commands Lewitt couldn't make out from
    across the room.
     Roger that, Teal Falcon. We confirm. You're go for launch
     at T-minus two minutes, ten seconds and counting. Final
     launch authentication as follows ...
      "Shit!"
     Dooley's eyes were wide with amazement. Lewitt ignored
     the last set of code-numbers transmitted over the comlink; it
     wasn't necessary for him to enter the authentication in order
     to launch the missiles. "What's going on?" he said, cupping
     his hand over the mike.
      "J dunno!" Dooley was becoming frantic; he bent closer to

    




    260
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    the screen as he stabbed urgently at the keyboard, anxiousl3
    watching the display. "Everything's freezing up ... I can't gel
    anything to work!"
     "Nothing?" Lewitt glanced up at the remaining TV moni
    tors. The silo covers had slid open, allowing pale earthligh
    to bathe the five Minutemen he could see on the remainin)
    monitors; the missiles were poised for launch, but the worl
    platforms were still in place within the silos and the umbili
    cals hadn't detached. "What about the primary ignitioi
    system? "
     "I'm telling you, nothing works!" Dooley was almos
    pounding the keyboard in frustration. "Fucking computer i
    ignoring everything I send to it! I can't-!"
     His head jerked up, mouth gaping as he stared at Lewit,
    "Goddamn, " he whispered. "I'll be goddamned . . .
     "What?"
     "A fucking virus." Dooley shook his head incredulously a
    his eyes moved back to the console. "I don't know how the
    did it, but they've put a fucking virus in this thing. There's n
    other explanation." A weird grin appeared on his face. "I don
    ... fuck, how did they ... ?"
     Lewitt was about to say something when Mission Contr(
    came back on line. Teal,Falcon, do you confirm final launc
    authentication?
     Lewitt quickly uncupped the mike. "Ah, we copy, Houstoi
    We're go for launch at. . . "
     The chronometer told him that seventy seconds remaint
    until launch. "T-minus one minute, ten seconds," he ft
    ished. "Standby, over."
     He reached across the board and switched off the radi
    "Fuck that," he murmured, then looked back at Dooley. "E
    you have time to reboot the program?"
     Dooley laughed out loud. "Are you kidding? This is a mai
    frame crash! I can't get anything up and running witho-
    dumping everything and starting over from scratch .'. . ai
    that's only if I can locate the virus and rub it out of ti
    system."
     "What about Uwe?" Talsbach was still standing on the la

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    261
    
    der, apparently oblivious to everything that was going on be-
    hind him. "He could be injured, or. . . "
     "Fuck Uwe." Lewitt ran a hand through his hair; it came
    back slick with sweat. Right now, the President would be
    wrapping up his pithy speech from behind the Oval Office
    desk. It was Sunday, so he would be wearing a blue cardigan
    and a golf shirt. A picture of his wife and daughter would be
    visible on the table behind him, and on the antique desk
    would be the ceremonial button he would press that would
    supposedly send the Minutemen into solar oblivion. When
    Houston saw that the missiles didn't leave their silos ...
     "Okay," he said softly, trying to get a grip. "Maybe the com-
    puter's feeding you wrong info or something. . . "
     "Wrong info?" Dooley's laugh was a nerve-racking bray.
    "Hey, dude, take a reality check! This isn't a Nintendo game.
    This is-"
     "Shut up and grab that other key!" Lewitt controlled a sud-
    den urge to twist the obnoxious little twit's head off his shoul-
    ders. "Just do it!"
     Dooley seemed as if he were about to add another slacker-
    generation sarcasm; one look at Lewitt's face, though, made
    him reconsider. Without a word, he grasped the metal key in
    the slot on his console.
     Lewitt grabbed his own key. "Okay," he said quietly, peer-
    ing at the flashing numbers on the chronometer. It was now
    T-minus twelve seconds and counting. "When I say 'mark/
    turn it to the right. Got it?"
     "Got it," Dooley said. "But I'm telling you, this isn't going
    to-//
    
     "Just do as I say." Lewitt's heart was thudding against his
    chest as he watched the last few digits flash by. "Three .
     two -~ one ... mark!"
      In t e same instant, both men twisted their keys from
     STANDBY to LAUNCH.
      Nothing happened.
     On the TV monitors, the Minutemen remained dormant in
     their silos. No flash of engine ignition, no billowing exhaust
     fumes, no graceful rise of sleek missiles from their berths. The
     rockets were frozen in place.

    




    262
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     As Dooley let out his breath and sank back in his ch
    Lewitt reached out to stab buttons which killed all telem
    to the Wheel and Earth. If there was any grim satisfactio
    be had in the fact that the President of the United States
    just pushed a buttorn which was absolutely useless even
    formality, he didn't feel it.
     "Okay." Lewitt settled back in the chair and fitted the h(
    set over his ears. "Time to go to the backup plan."
     He turned a dial on the communications panel before h
    readjusting it to a seldom-used S-band frequency. -G1
    Rider, this is Blue Falcon. Code red. I repeat, code red. Do
    copy? Over."
     Fortunately, the radio still worked. While he waited f
    reply, Lewitt glanced over his shoulder at Talsbach, who
    still hovering beneath the closed hatch. He jerked his h
    upward.
     "Get'em," he said.

    




    .r I'
    
    'Y
    
    Transcript of television address by President Bill Clinton;
    February / 9, 1995
    
     "My fellow Americans ...
     "Twenty-six years ago, a previous Administration determined that, for
    reasons of national security, it was vital to protect American interests at
    home and abroad by placing weapons of mass destruction on the Moon.
    This plan was carried out in secret, without prior knowledge or approval
    of the American public or most of its elected officials. Although the exis-
    tence of this small arsenal was eventually made known, to this day these
    weapons-six Minuteman 11 missiles, each containing a one-megaton nu-
    clear war-head-have remained on the Moon.
     "A generation has passed since then, and the world has become a
    different place. I will not apologize for the actions taken by another Presi-
    dent, or for the willingness of his successcq-s to continue his policies, since
    they were done in the spirit of defending the United States. However,
    this Administr-ation believes that it is no longer necessary, or desirable,
    for thi's country to maintain a nuclear deterrent in outer space at a time
    when we're actively dismantling our land-based strategic nuclear arsenal.
     "Three years ago, President Dole signed the United Nations Space
    Treaty which outlawed the deployment of weapons of mass destruction
    in Earth orbit or on any heavenly body. In accordance with this intema-
    tional treaty, I am today issuing the final order for the destruction of all
    six missiles stored at the Teal Falcon installation at the Sea of Tranquillity
    on the Moon. This order will be carried out at twelve o'clock P.m. Green-
    wich meridian time, seven o'clock A.m. Eastem Standard Time, under the
    remote supervision of the Intemational Atomic Energy Agency.
     "On the desk before me is a button which, once pressed, will signal
    our astronauts on the Moon to launch the missiles. Instead of heading for
    Earth, as they were designed to do, the missiles will be sent into the Sun,
    where they will be harmlessly consumed by its vast energy, This action is
    as symbolic as it is practical: just as the Sun gives us life, so it will aid in
    the destruction of our engines of death.
     "After the missiles are launched, the base where they were stored
    will be turned over to a private GerTnan corporation, which intends to
    eventually use it for the safe disposal of high-level nuclear waste from
    Earth. In this way, what was once a secret military site will be used to
    enhance the quality of the global environment.

    




    264
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     "As I said earlier, I will not apologize for the decisions made by MY
    predecessors in the White House. However, as President of the United
    States, I beg forgiveness for the fear and anxiety which those actions may
    have caused the people of the world.
     "And now, I will press the button . .

    




    T-W-E-N-T-Y
    
    / I
    
    /19/95-1203 GMT
    
                           hat does SIS have to do
    with all this?" Parnell demanded. "And why didn't you tell
    me you're spying for them?"
     They were taking turns holding the pistol while they
    climbed into their suits. Parnell was wearing everything ex-
    cept his helmet, and Ryer had half-completed her suit-up pro-
    cess. Leamore was just getting started; he barely looked up
    from the heavy boots he was struggling to pull on.
     "For starters," he said, grunting as he shoved his left foot
    into the matching boot and attached its ring to the cuff, "I'm
    not a spy, but an agent. There's a difference, you know. . . "
     "I don't care if you're a circus clown." Parnell's eyes never
    left the closed hatch leading up from the lower levels. If it
    budged so much as an inch, he'd fire a bullet down the ladder.
    He glanced at Ryer; her suit was sealed, and she was now
    shouldering her life-support pack. "When you get done," he
    said to her, "help him."
     Ryer nodded as Leamore heaved his right foot into the other
    boot. "What I really meant to say," Leamore went on, "is that
    I'm not fully aware of all the details because I'm not a full-
    time operative. The fellows at Century House recruited me
    when they first learned about this entire business, because I

    




    266
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    had already been assigned to this mission, but they didn't I
    me completely into their confidence."
     He cast a quick grin at Parnell. "So you're not talkin
    James Bond here. I'm just fortunate that I got the drop on I
    Aachener before he took me out instead."
     "So tell us what you do know," Parnell said. "Who are t]
    guys working for?"
     Leamore fastened the right ankle ring, then stood up
    hastily pulled the heavy suit up over his chest and shouli
    "Ever heard of a gent named Wolff-Dieter Rautmann?
    asked. Parnell shook his head. "Not many people have,
    went on. "He's a freelance arms dealer working out of
    many, the same party who has been supplying second
    Russian munitions to various Middle Eastern countrie
    several years. All perfectly legal, but SIS has suspected
    while now that he's also been trading in nastier stuff-nu
    components, chemical and biological agents, and so ford
    so on-to whoever will buy them."
     "Can we skip the life history, please?"
     "Quite. At any rate, early last year Germany's State S
    ity Ministry raided a Baader-Meinhof safe house in Boni
    arrested a number of suspected terrorists. When they in-
    gated one of the prisoners, they learned about Marku
    Uwe."
     "Talsbach and Aachener are terrorists?" Ryer snappec'
    the buckles of her backpack and began connecting its oi
    hoses to the chest valves. "I've heard about Baader-Me:
    This is kind of a big operation for those guys, isn't it?"
     Leamore nodded. "Markus and Uwe were once with tl~.
    Army Faction a long time ago, but this isn't a Baader-M(
    operation." He shoved his right arm down a sleeve. "If tl
    got ideological reasons, it's secondary to whatever t.
    being paid. They were recruited for this job because the,
    about to enter astronaut training. Seems that these chai
    had decided to get straight jobs, even if they them
    weren't quite straight. Like your man Lewitt intil
    money speaks louder than ideology, particularly w]
    comes to treason."
     He paused to pull the suit the rest of the way on

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    267
    
    ducked his head to stick it through the collar ring. "Anyway,"
    he gasped when he came up for air, "the Germans tipped off
    SIS, and Century House investigated on its own. To make a
    long story short, its informants discovered that Rautmann
    went to the trouble of finding and recruiting these gents for
    the purpose of getting hold of your nukes here."
     "For Baader-Meinhof?" Ryer asked, sounding slightly con-
    fused.
     "Them?" Leamore blew out his cheeks. "Not bloody likely.
    Nothing so small. This whole thing is being done at the behest
    of the People's Democratic Government of North Korea."
     "North Korea?" Surprised, Parnell looked away from the
    hatch. "What would it gain from firing missiles from ... ? "
     "No, you idiot." Leamore was becoming inpatient. "Not
    firing missiles ... acquiring missiles. Or rather, the warhead
    from one of those Minutemen."
     He paused in his labors at suiting up. "Look. Missiles
    they've got-they've already built their Nodong- 1, in case you
    haven't heard-but when the U.N. clamped down on their
    bomb factory last year, they had to look elsewhere. They
    knew that was coming, so a couple of years ago they hired our
    friend Herr Rautmann, who in turn set up this entire opera-
    tion. SIS also learned that Cecil Orvitz-or rather, Paul
    Dooley, as you know him-was recruited by ...
     "Hold on." Parnell was still trying to absorb all this; too
    much was being thrown at him too fast. "Wait a minute.
    They're trying to hijack the missiles? How did they expect
    to ... 11
     "Accomplish this feat?" Leamore shrugged within the suit's
    cumbersome carapace. He fumbled with the seals until Ryer
    stepped over to assist him. "We're not quite certain-or, at
    least, I'm not certain, although I'm positive that SIS knows
    more than 1. Whatever their means, though, the objective is
    still the same."
      "Getting the nukes from our Minutemen," Ryer said.
     "Correct. Thank you, dear." Leamore's gaze turned back to
    Parnell. "Once Kim Jong acquires a ready-made warhead, he
    doesn't have to worry about U.N. inspectors. He can resell it

    




    268
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    to whoever is willing to meet his price. Or put it on one of his
    own rockets, if he wants to make Seoul sweat bullets."
     Something was beginning to tug at the back of Parnell's
    mind, but before he could voice his thoughts, Ryer cut in. "If
    SIS knew about all this and sent you, then why didn't you
    come and tell us? It would have saved a lot of grief ... stand
    up straight."
     Leamore stood straighter, sucking in his gut as Ryer pulled
    the airtight zipper partway up the back of his suit. "Because
    this was supposed to be an intelligence operation, that's all.
    SIS knew that Dooley, Aachener, and Talsbach were involved.
    We also knew that Rhodes and Bromleigh were clean. Beyond
    that, we didn't know who among the remaining crew mem-
    bers might have been recruited, if any."
     He looked over his shoulder at Ryer, then nodded toward
    Parnell. "For all we knew, you or Gene could have been part of
    the scheme, so I couldn't afford to trust either of you. Sorry."
     Ryer and Parnell glanced at each other. Whatever quarrel
    they might have once had was now settled; all that mattered
    now was survival. "Don't worry about it," Parnell murmured.
    "I seem to have misplaced my trust as well."
     Ryer gave him a quick smile. Another thought occurred to
    him. "What is it about that disk, anyway?" he asked her.
     "Some private revenge, that's all," Ryer said as she fought
    the rear zipper the rest of the way up Leamore's back. "With
    any luck, it'll stop the launch, maybe buy us some time."
    When Gene opened his mouth to speak, she shook her head.
    "I'll tell you about it later."
     Parnell looked at his wrist chronometer. He wasn't willing
    to bet on luck. it was now 1212 Zulu. The missiles should
    have launched twelve minutes ago. They had no idea whether
    the Minutemen had cleared the silos; down here, within the
    lunar crust, no vibration could penetrate the isolation of the
    bunker.
     Ryer hefted Leamore's life-support pack and began to hqlp
    him guide his arms through the shoulder straps. "You said
    this was supposed to be an intelligence operation. Thatmeans
    you weren't supposed to stop them?"
     "Not unless it became absolutely necessary," Leamore

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    269
    
    plied. "All we wanted was evidence that two known Red
    Army operatives and an accomplice-Dooley, although you
    know better yourself by now-were involved in the theft. We
    intended to gain such evidence from the ATS camera footage.
    Once that was accomplished, everything would be disclosed
    to the cousins ...
     "The CIA."
     "That's right, along with the White House and the Pentagon
    ... and as a result NATO would have been able to take the
    matter to the U.N. Security Council, which would have at-
    tempted to resolve the matter through diplomacy and so forth.
    Altogether, it was supposed to be a rather low-key, hush-hush
    sort of affair."
     Leamore picked up a gauntlet and pulled it over his left
    hand. "But apparently Aachener got wise to my role some-
    how. So far as I know, he was aware of my involvement even
    before we left the Wheel."
     He swore under his breath. "In any event, he tried to silence
    me when I went to the W.C., but I managed to get the gun
    away from him. After that I hid out in the crew's quarters,
    waiting to see what would happen next."
     "But by then I had wised up-" Parnell began.
     "And forced the issue, which leads to our current situa-
    tion." Leamore fastened the wrist link of his left glove. "I sup-
    pose I can't rightly blame you, Commander," he said as he
    picked up the right glove. "You had stumbled upon this
    bloody mess and tried to prevent it. But the whole sodding
    thing went to hell as soon as you pulled that gun and pointed
    it at the wrong fellow, and that's why. . . "
     He fumbled with the gauntlet. It dropped to the floor. "Oh,
    damn," he murmured, and bent over to pick it up. Or at least
    he tried to; the bulky suit prevented him from doing so much
    as touch his knees.
     "I'll get it." Parnell walked over to where the glove lay, his
    boots clunking heavily on the deck. He knelt to his right knee
    and retrieved the gauntlet.
     He was about to hand it to Leamore when he heard the me-
    tallic rasp of hatch-cover hinges. Before he could turn around,
    a gun went off behind him.

    




    111
    
    270
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     Lewitt jerked at the sharp crack of a gunshot from some-
    where above.
     For an instant, he thought someone was firing into the con-
    trol room; he grabbed the automatic from the desktop and
    swiveled around in his chair, staring at the open hatchway.
     "Markus!" he shouted. "What's going on up there?"
     No response. He yanked off the headset and started to rise
    from the chair, but Orvitz looked up from the left console.
    "Sit down," he said, almost too calmly. "Whatever it is,
    they'll take care of it."
     Lewitt hesitated, then resumed his place at the right-hand
    firing console. Like it or not, Orvitz was right; this was why
    the Germans had been recruited, to act as backups in case
    something went wrong with the operation. Lewitt reluctantly
    put the pistol down, replaced his headset, and returned his
    attention to the console. Although the computers were still
    inoperative, Teal Falcon's radar system remained functional.
    A small blip had entered the scope; as he watched, it closed
    steadily on the bull's-eye at the center of the screen.
     He reactivated the radio. "Ghost Rider, this is Blue Falcon.
    We have you on primary approach. Do you copy? Over."
     There was a short pause, then a Russian-accented voice
    came over the headset. We understand, Blue Falcon. Ghost
    Rider is at one hundred fifty kilometers, downrange fifteen
    kilometers. Landing estimated in ten minutes. Has the pe-
    rimeter been secured? Over.
     Lewitt glanced at Orvitz, who was listening through his
    headset. Orvitz nodded his head. "Roger that, Ghost Rider,"
    Lewitt replied. "Be advised that we're still encountering some
    resistance within the base, but it will be taken care of by the
    time you arrive. Over."
     There was a long pause. After a few moments, the voice
    returned. We understand, Blue Falcon. We are continuing
    with approach and landing. Over.
     Lewitt grimaced. Of course Ghost Rider would land; it,,;
    crew had no other options.
     The original plan had called for TF-6 to be launched into ar
    elliptical cislunar orbit, where it would have been interceptec,

    




    dir
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    271
    
    by Ghost Rider. Two Russian former cosmonauts would then
    have gone EVA; using special tools, and consulting schematic
    diagrams of the Minuteman's payload package which had
    been smuggled out of the West, they would have opened the
    missile's faring and removed the warhead.
     All this would have been accomplished without anyone on
    Earth or the Moon being the wiser; controllers at Von Braun
    and the Wheel would have believed that TF-6 was on a solar
    trajectory along with the five other missiles, thanks to false
    transponder coordinates which Orvitz's program was sup-
    posed to relay to the Deep Space Tracking Network.
     Ghost Rider would have returned to Earth while Conestoga
    was still at Tranquillity Base. Orvitz, Aachener, and Talsbach,
    and Lewitt himself, would have flown home aboard Cones-
    toga. By the time anyone figured out what had happened to
    TF-6-if ever-he would be catching a jet to Argentina, where
    Lisa and their child were already waiting for him.
     Lewitt sagged back in the chair, rubbing his eyes. A care-
    fully developed plan, two years in the making, now straight
    down the toilet. First, Orvitz's cover had been blown because
    he couldn't handle some stupid ginip girlfriend Dooley had in
    Arizona. Then Uwe had gotten suspicious about Leamore and
    attempted to kill him. And even after everything had fucked
    up, but just when it seemed as if he could get the situation
    under control, this shit with a dime-store virus program ...
     "Jesus," he mumbled. "Talk about chaos theory
     "What's that?" Orvitz asked.
     Lewitt shook his head. "Never mind."
     By now, everyone from Texas to the White House must be
    in a panic, trying to find out why the Minutemen hadn't
    launched or why they had lost contact with Teal Falcon.
    There was no point in trying to make up excuses; Mission
    Control would only want to speak with Parnell, or have
    Rhodes and Bromleigh transmit a TV picture from the bunker.
     But they still had their backup plan.
     All was not yet lost. The second plan didn't rely on subter-
     fuge so much as brute force, but it was only a different means
     to the same end. Even if TF-6 was grounded, its silo doors
     were open, the missile itself still accessible from the surface.
    
    I

    




    272
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    It meant doing the same job the hard way, but Ghost Rider'
    crew would still get their warheads, one way or another....
     Another gunshot from above. Lewitt glanced again at th
    hatch. What the hell was going on up there?
    
     The first round had taken off the top of Leamore's head, bu
    Parnell didn't realize he had been killed before he whippe
    around and got off a single, clumsy shot at the half-ope
    hatch.
     The bullet ricocheted off the inside of the hatch cover. Pa
    nell caught the briefest glimpse of Talsbach's face before tl~
    hatch dropped shut again.
     Goddamn! The son of a bitch had been listening the entii
    time ... and, like an idiot, Parnell had moved away from tl
    hatch just long enough for Talsbach to poke his head throug
     "Is everyone all right?" Parnell yelled. He didn't dare tal
    his eyes from the hatch; the Glock was cradled in both hand
    aimed at the hatch in case Talsbach tried again.
     "Leamore's down!"
     Ryer was crouched near the wall, staring at the bo~
    sprawled across the deck at her feet. Dark red blood was po(
    ing around Leamore's skull. "Oh, shit," she whispered. "H(
    dead, Gene ......
     Parnell stole a quick glance over his shoulder. Leamore h
    been lucky once, but not twice ... and the way things sto(
    luck was beginning to run out for both him and Ryer.
     But maybe not. They were both fully suited except for th,
    helmets, and the airlock was just behind them. All they h
    to do was put on their helmets, pressurize their suits, en
    the airlock, and ...
     And what? Cycle-out would take at least thirty minut
    In the meantime, they would be trapped inside the airlc
    chamber. Its hatch was airtight, but not bulletproof; some(
    could still fire through it.
     Talsbach didn't even have to do that. The control papel o
    side the airlock could stop the depressurization cycle. If T,
    bach shut off the airlock while they were inside, then he,
    Ryer would be cornered. The proverbial fish in a barrel I
    better odds of survival.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    273
    
     Unless ...
     "Cris!" he whispered.
     She didn't respond; glancing toward her, he saw that she
    was staring at Leamore.
     "Ryer, snap out of it!"
     She blinked and slowly raised her head. She was on the
    verge of panic, but hadn't lost it yet.
     "Put your helmet on!" he whispered. "Put on your helmet
    and get in the airlock! "
     She blinked a few more times and shook her head; she, too,
    had realized that they could be trapped in the airlock. "But
    they can. . . "
     "Shut up and do it! I'll cover you!"
     Ryer nodded dully. She rose from the wall, looked around
    stupidly until she spotted her helmet several feet away. Par-
    nell didn't mind the noise her boots made against the floor as
    she walked over to pick it up.
     In fact, he was counting on Talsbach having his ear pressed
    against the hatch.
     He waited until she had put on her helmet and sealed her
    suit. Then, when she opened the airlock hatch, he made his
    move. Carefully placing the gun on the floor so that he could
    grab it in an instant, he reached out for his own helmet.
     Despite his caution, there were a couple of minutes when
    he couldn't pick up the pistol; his hands were busy, sealing
    his helmet ring and activating the suit's electrical and life-
    support systems. He left the radio off-too much chance
    someone in the control room might be monitoring this fre-
    quency-and he didn't allow his eyes to waver from the floor
    hatch until he was finished.
     He retrieved the gun and straightened up, ignoring the
    cramp in his knees as he moved across the suit-up room to
    the airlock. For no real reason, he recalled a rock song his son
    used to play on the stereo; he whispered the refrain under his
    breath.
     "Gimme three steps ... gimme three steps ... gimme three
    steps towards the door . . ." When he entered the airlock, he
    raised his left hand and jerked it down several times, palm-

    




    274
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    down, clawing his fingers as much as the heavy gloves would
    allow.
     Ryer understood. She knelt on all fours and pushed her fin-
    gers through the open gridwork of the airlock floor. Maybe
    she realized what he was going to do; there wasn't enough
    time to ask.
     The airlock's internal control panel was near the hatch. Par-
    nell placed the gun on the floor beneath the panel, where he
    could still reach it, then slammed the hatch shut as hard as he
    could and wrenched the lock-lever downward. If Talsbach oj
    Aachener was listening from Level 2A, they would undoubt
    edly hear the noise.
     If so, only a few seconds remained. He bent to one knee an(
    grabbed a piece of the gridwork floor with his left hand; witl
    his right hand, he flipped open the control panel. His hear
    was thudding as he sought for the candy-striped toggle switc]
    at the bottom of the panel.
     Glancing up at the hatch, he saw the lock-lever moving ur
    ward. They had been heard moving into the airlock, all right
     The airlock door started to open. He remembered his kid!
    faces, then flipped the emergency switch marked VOID.
     Pyros in the ceiling hatch above their heads detonate(
    blowing the hatch cover off its hinges, and a miniature hurr
    cane erupted inside the airlock as its atmosphere explode
    through the manhole-size opening.
     Even through his helmet, the roar was deafening; it was,
    if a freight train were running through the chamber. The tei
    dons in his left hand screamed as he clung to the gridwor
    His legs began to lift from the floor, and he managed to ha
    his right arm downward and grasp the gridwork with his rig'
    hand.
     His helmet faceplate clouded, but before it complete
    frosted over he caught a brief glimpse of an unsuited hum
    form flailing helplessly as it was sucked into the chamber.
     He heard a scream, thinned by the escaping pressure-,th
    Markus Talsbach was propelled through the ceiling hatch li
    a tree branch caught in the vortex of a tornado.
     Then Parnell could see nothing as his faceplate whited ov
     The noise gradually subsided; his legs sank back to t

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    275
    
    floor. Nothine remained excer)t the soundless din of hard
    
    vacuum.
     When his faceplate cleared, its moisture evaporated, he saw
    the airlock hatch gaping open. The ready-room beyond was
    wrecked; he didn't want to see what had become of James
    Leamore's corpse. The gun that he had laid at his feet was
    missing. He hoped he didn't need it any longer, but didn't ex-
    pect that he would.
     Parnell took a long, ragged breath, then pulled his fingers
    out of the floor. Turning around on his knees, he saw that Ryer
    was still with him. She fought her way unsteadily to her feet;
    her back arched slightly as she gazed up at the open ceiling
    hatch. When she looked back down at him again, Parnell
    pointed to his helmet and raised one finger. He waited until
    
    she had switched on her suit radio.
     "You okay?" he asked.
     Yeah, I'm okay, She gazed up again at the hatch. You killed
    him.
     Parnell didn't want to think about what he had just done.
    He reminded himself that he mi-zht live to see his familv
    
    again; that was all that mattered right now
    
     "Yeah, I killed him." He took another breath, then hauled
    himself to his feet. "We're not out of this yet. C'mon, let's get
    out of here."

    





    




    All
    
    From The Associated Press (Le Matrix on-line news service);
    February 19, 1995, 7:30 A.m. EST
    
     HOUSTON-Radio contact has been lost with the multinational ex-
    pedition to the Moon, say spokesmen at NASA's Von Braun Manned
    Space Flight Center.
     Contact with the former USSF installation, code-named Teal Falcon,
    was lost at 6:59 A.M. Eastern time, just prior to the beginning of President
    Clinton's nationally televised address to the nation regarding the final
    disposal of the rnissi!es.
     The President delivered his speech as scheduled, which culminated
    with his pushing a ceremonial button that was to signal the simultaneous
    launch of the Minuteman rockets toward the Sun. However, NASA has
    been unable to confirm whether or not the lunar-based ICBM's were
    fired from their underground silos.
     Mission controllers are unable to determine hv or how communica-
    
    tions abruptly ceased at the moment when six Minuteman 11 rockets were
    scheduled to be launched from a missile site near the lunar base.
     Although a two-person ATS TV network news team accompanied the
    American-German expedition to the Teal Falcon bunker, no television
    images have yet been received. ATS correspondent Beridey Rhodes, who
    is credited with exposing the Dole Administration's contingency plan to
    use the lunar missiles during the Desert Storm war was scheduled to
    transmit a live report following the launch.
     NASA officials say that countdown for the missile launch proceeded
    according to plan until the final radio message received from Teal Falcon,
    when NASA astronaut Jay Lewitt reported that mission commander Eu-
    gene Parnell had left the firing room to solve unspecified problems with
    the installation's computer system. Contact with the expedition ceased
    immediately after that transmission.
     NASA spokesman David Fitzhugh would not speculate on what may
    have caused the silence. "We're watching the situation very closely," he
    said.

    




    T-W-E-N-T-Y-O-N-E
    
    2/1919S-1232 GMT
    
                           eaching the surface toc
    longer than expected. Although neither Parnell nor Ryer h,,
    noticed it at the time, each had suffered bruises and pulh
    muscles in the control room fight and during the airlock bloN
    out. Climbing the sixty-foot ladder up the entrance shaft w,
    a painful ordeal, and by the time they reached the outer don
    they had to pause to catch their breath.
     It could have been much worse. Markus Talsbach hadr
    needed to climb the ladder; the explosive decompression h
    blown him straight up the shaft. Neither of them wished
    study the mangled corpse sprawled across the auxiliary ox
    gen tanks; one glimpse of the black, frozen blood splash,
    across the walls was nearly enough to make them sick.
     Can we make it to the tractor okay? Ryer stared throu,
    the open door to the closer of the two vehicles. It's only t
    meters away, I think.
     Parnell pulled his gaze from Talsbach's body. "I don't s
    why not," he replied, swallowing hard. Thankful for the d
    traction, he peered through the door at the nearby tract
    "Twenty, thirty feet. Piece of cake."
     That's not what I meant. What about the gyrojet guns?
     "They're preset only to fire at moving objects outside t
    crater." Gazing at the nearest guns atop the walls, he pau,

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    279
    
    to reconsider. "Unless Dooley managed to reprogram the de-
    fense perimeter to ignore the security codes, or even track
    anything in motion within the crater. Then we could be in
    trouble."
     I don't think so. Look over there. Ryer pointed to the silos
    on the far side of the crater. The missiles are still in place. ff
    they managed to get the computers working again, wouldn't
    they have launched them?
     Parnell peered closely at the distant silos. Through their
    open hatches, he could make out the nose cones of the six
    Minutemen. Cris had a good point; if the computers were
    back on-line, then firing the missiles would have been the
    first thing Lewitt and Dooley did. After that, they might have
    reprogrammed the crater guns.
     "Nice little program you got there," he murmured.
    "Where'd you pick it up, Radio Shack?"
     Ryer didn't reply, nor did she need to; Parnell could guess
    the rest. "Never mind," he said. "We'll work it out later." He
    moved closer to the door. "I think we can take the risk. just
    to be on the safe side, though, we'd better run for it. You with
    me?"
     Like we've got a choice? Ryer lowered her helmet visor.
    Okay, on the count of three. One.
     Parnell didn't wait for the countdown. Pushing past her, he
    leaped through the doorway and bounded for Tractor One. His
    boots kicked up dusty regolith with each bunny-hop he took;
    on the third jump, though, his left foot found a large rock that
    sent him sprawling.
     He instinctively rolled, taking most of the impact on his
    hips and shoulders, raising his arms to keep his faceplate from
    being fractured, until he Jay chest-down on the ground. Suck-
    ing in his breath, he stared up at the crater wall, waiting for
    the guns to zero in on him and the first gyrojet bullet to rip
    through his suit.
     Are you okay~ Ryer asked.
     She stood a few feet behind Parnell, looking down at him.
    Parnell clambered to his feet, dusting off his arms with his
    gloves. "Fine," he replied. "I guess that settles that ... about
    the guns, I mean."

    




    280
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     Ryer didn't reply. Instead, she arched her body backward,
    apparently to look up at something directly overhead.
     I think I know why they didn't launch the missiles, she
    said softly.
     Parnell forgot about the spill he had just taken. He copied
    her movements, staring past the rim of his helmet until he
    could see the black sky above Sabine Crater.
     A bright constellation had appeared above them: four
    tightly grouped stars that were not fixed in the heavens. As he
    watched, the constellation grew closer, subtly increasing in
    luminosity, until he could make out a vague mass behind
    them that occulted the stars as it passed.
     A spacecraft, descending from space for a landing inside the
    crater.
     I think we'd better get out of here, Ryer said.
     "No argument there." Parnell turned and began to run the
    last few yards to the tractor.
    
     Lewitt watched Parnell and Ryer on the TV monitor as they
    headed for the tractor. Even if he could have reactivated the
    crater guns and trained them on his former crewmates, he
    wouldn't have done so. He wasn't about to admit it to Cecil
    Orvitz, but he was just as happy to let them go. Gene particu-
    larly; he had a wife and kids at home.
     Pretty soon, Lewitt mused, he would be seeing his own wife
    and daughter. The operation had been botched, but the dam-
    age was far from irreparable. Rautmann still owed him a mil-
    lion bucks once a nuke was delivered; two million dollars in
    a numbered Swiss bank account can buy a lot of freedom, es-
    pecially in South America. Lisa wouldn't understand at first,
    but she would get used to it....
     He shook it off. There would be plenty of time later to make
    plans. Right now, he had a job to do.
     "Ghost Rider, we've got you on final approach at angels
    one-five," he said into his headset mike. "You're looking g(od
    for touchdown, over."
     Understood, Blue Falcon. The Russian pilot's voice was dis-
    tracted; he was undoubtedly focused on the task of landing his
    craft within the confines of the crater.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    281
    
     As if to underline the point, a second voice-this one Amer-
    ican, a Southerner judging by his accent-came over the link.
    Ahh ... Blue Falcon, we see some movement within the cra-
    ter, Are you sure the perimeter has been safed?
     Lewitt pursed his lips. He glanced again at the monitor.
    Ryer and Parnell were climbing into Tractor One; in another
    few minutes they would be gone.
     "A couple of guys escaped," he replied. "Don't worry about
    them. They can't do anything."
     Orvitz brayed laughter; Lewitt gave him a look which shut
    the younger man up immediately. There was little Parnell or
    Ryer could do now except return to Conestoga. Even when
    they alerted the Wheel by radio and informed them as to what
    had happened at Teal Falcon, there was nothing anyone could
    do to prevent Ghost Rider from taking as many warheads as
    they wanted.
     Lewitt's most immediate problem was leaving the bunker.
    When Parnell had blown the airlock hatch, he had not only
    killed Markus Talsbach, he had also decompressed Level 1A.
    Fortunately, Aachener had slammed shut the 2A hatch and
    sealed it, so the blowout had been limited to the top level of
    Unit A. The rest of the bunker remained pressurized, and they
    had enough oxygen to last at least two more weeks.
     However, the three of them couldn't leave the base. There
    were no other exits besides the airlock, and that was separated
    from them by the suit-up room on Level 1A, which was ex-
    posed to hard vacuum.
     This was a minor detail, however. Ghost Rider's crew had
    been informed of the emergency; they knew that there were
    three men in the bunker who needed to be rescued. All some-
    one had to do was enter the airlock, close the hatches, and
    repressurize the rest of the bunker.
     We copy, Blue Falcon, the American replied. We're coming
    in for landing.
     There was another pause. When the voice returned, it was
    tinted with vague humor. By the way, Ghost Rider pilot
    wants to know where we should send your share of ...
      Abruptly, the transmission was cut off.
      What the hell... ?

    




    282
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     "Ghost Rider, this is Blue Falcon." Lewitt stared at the
    radar screen as the blip entered the innermost circle of the
    bull's-eye. "We don't copy. Please repeat, over."
    
     Parnell stopped the tractor inside the pass at the top of the
    crater wall. It was impossible to tell whether the guns were
    still operational, but to make certain, he transmitted the six-
    digit code which would assure their safe passage through the
    security buffer. At least he hoped so; he was taking Ryer's
    analysis of the situation entirely on faith.
     That done, he turned around in his seat and peered through
    the driver's dome at the crater below him.
     The craft that had touched down on the far side of Sabine
    Crater was the stuff of legend. Back in the sixties, when Par-
    nell had been training for Project Luna, rumors had circulated
    within the Space Force about a nuclear spacecraft the Rus-
    sians were secretly developing to beat Eagle One to the Moon.
    It later turned out the stories were true; however, Zenith-One
    had exploded on the launch pad, while Zenith-Two had appar-
    ently been dismantled for scrap metal.
     Now he knew differently. Zenith-Two rested on its tripod
    landing gear, a streamlined, spike-nosed needle eighty feet
    tall, like something from an old George Pal movie. Pale lights
    glowed from its cockpit windows; halfway down the sleek fu-
    selage, a red star was painted across the hull.
     Good God, Ryer said from below, gazing through a window
    in the passenger compartment. Where did they find that an-
    tiqne?
     Parnell shrugged. "Probably stashed away in a warehouse in
    Siberia. Purchased for a few billion dollars, shipped by freight
    train into North Korea, refurbished in the mountains ... who
    knows? They've got it now."
     A few days ago, he and Joe Laughlin had been worrying
    about whether North Korea had developed a reliable satellite
    launcher. This was better than that: a surplus nuclear space,
    craft, capable of dropping nukes wherever its owners pleased.
    The Zenith was almost a generation old, to be sure, but who
    needed the latest technology if the objectives remained basic?
     As they watched, a cargo hatch yawned open on the vessel's

    




    I
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    283
    
    underbelly. A few moments later the slender boom of a crane
    began to telescope outward. Within the hatch, they could see
    the tiny form of a spacesuited figure.
     "They'll be going for one of the missiles now," Parriell said.
    "All they have to do is climb down one of the silos, cut open
    the payload faring, and help themselves." He shook his head.
    "They don't even have to settle for one nuke ... they can
    bring home as many as they can fit into the cargo bay."
     Oh, man ... For someone whom he had once suspected of
    being a turncoat, Cris sounded properly mortified. Gene,
    we've got to stop them ...
     Parnell laughed out loxid. "How? We don't even have a gun
    anymore ... I lost mine during the blowout. You think we
    stand a chance?"
     We can head back to the base, she insisted. There are mor-
    tar rockets stored in the garage, the ones they used for geolog-
    ical research. We can rig one up, fire it at the crater ...
     "And probably miss," he said. "Have you ever fired one? I
    never did."
     But we can figure out ...
     "Maybe we could. But even if we managed to hit something,
    what would happen? If we're lucky, we'd destroy their ship ...
    and probably touch off a nuclear explosion. Do you want to be
    that close to a nuke when it blows? I don't."
     Goddammit, Gene! Ryer crawled forward to the short lad-
    der leading to the pilot's dome; there wasn't enough room for
    both of them, so she futilely grabbed the right leg of his suit,
    shaking it to get his attention. We can't just let them get away
    with it!
     Suddenly, Parnell felt very tired. He had been fighting this
    battle for more than half his life. Before, it had been the Rus-
    sians; now, it was with North Koreans flying secondhand Rus-
    sian spaceships. In ten or twenty years, if he lived long enough
    and cared anymore, it would be with the Iranians or the Liby-
    ans or God knew who else managed to get their hands on cast-
    off technology to fulfill some cheap political ambition.
     Such are the battles younger men wage, when their blood is
    hot with ideology and their minds are filled with unbetrayed

    




    284
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    dreams. He was an old man now, though, and he was fed up
    with this bullshit.
     We've got to do something! Cris shouted.
     In response, Parnell put his hand on the gearshift and
    shoved it forward, then released his foot from the brake pedal.
    Ryer was pitched back as the tractor lurched forward, crawling
    through the excavated pass and down the far side of the crater.
     "Sure we can do something," he said. "We can go home."
     Nine miles away, Conestoga was waiting for them, with
    enough fuel left in its tanks for the voyage back to the Wheel.
    He was alive. That must count for something.
     "See ya 'round, Jay," he whispered, not looking back at the
    bunker. "I hope it was worth it to you."
    
     The men in the bunker hadn't heard anything from Ghos
    Rider since the Zenith touched down. Again and again, Lewitt
    hailed the North Korean vessel, only to be met with dead si-
    lence. He was beginning to harbor serious doubts when the
    voice of the Russian commander abruptly came over the com-
    link:
     Blue Falcon, this is Ghost Rider. Come in, over.
     "It's about time," Orvitz murmured as Lewitt let out his
    breath. He had long since given up on trying to restore the
    computers to operating status. The virus had totally infil-
    trated the mainframes, and even though it had been knocked
    out by a system reboot, it was then that he discovered that
    the missile c-cube system had been obliterated in the process.
    If there were backup files, they were located a quarter of a
    million miles away, in Crystal Palace's computers.
     Lewitt ignored the erstwhile Paul Dooley. "We copy, Ghost
    Rider. Nice landing. We were wondering about the LOS.
    Over."
     Behind him, he heard Uwe Aachener stand up from where.,111
    he had been sitting at the bottom of the ladder. The German
    astronaut had found some stale candy bars in a food locker in
    the galley. They were the only food left behind, and undoubt-
    edly several years old; that hadn't prevented Aachener from
    attempting to eat them. He crumpled a paper wrapper and
    tossed it in the bloodstained corner of the firing room, where

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    285
    
    Rhodes's and Bromleigh's bodies had lain before he had re-
    moved them to the bunk compartment.
     The Russian commander's voice resumed. I apologize for
    the delay, Mr. Lewitt, but we have encountered some ... ah,
    difficulti . es up here.
     "I'm sorry to hear that," Lewitt replied.
     It appears that some members of your landing party have
    managed to successfully escape, Ghost Rider continued. We
    saw their vehicle leaving the crater just a few minutes ago.
    Do you know anything about this~ Over.
     Lewitt smiled. just as well; despite all that had happened,
    he bore no real animosity toward Gene or Cris. "I understand,
    Ghost Rider. There was nothing we could do to prevent it. We
    lost a member of our own team in trying to stop them."
     A brief pause. I see, And you say that the bunker airlock
    has been voided, is that correct? And the top level?
     "That's right, Commander. We're trapped on the lower lev-
    els. " Lewitt hesitated, feeling uneasy, not quite knowing why.
    110f course, when you send one of your crew down here, he
    should be able to repressurize the airlock and Level 1A."
     Yes, that's true. Another pause, a little longer this time.
    Even so, we yet have a small problem. Since you and your
    team members were expected to return aboard the Cones-
    toga, we did not anticipate to supply ... um, accommoda-
    tions for three extra crew m embers.
     Cecil Orvitz went dead white. "What the fuck is he ... ?"
     Lewitt furtively motioned for him to shut up. Ignoring him,
    Orvitz snatched up his own headset. "You son of a bitch, that
    was part of-!"
     "Shut up!" Lewitt snapped. He hunched over the console,
    cradling the headset in his hands. "Look, Ghost Rider ... Yuri
     . the deal with Wolff -Deiter was that . . . "
     I am quite sorry, Ghost Rider interrupted, but the deal, as
    you say, has been changed, We shall require extra payload
    capacity to bring back some ... ah, new baggage.
     "You asshole!" Orvitz screamed. "You fucking bastard! Get
    us out of here!"
     There was a long silence from the other end of the channel.
    
    i
    
    I

    




    286
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    After a few moments, the Zenith's commanding officer spoke
    again.
     I am truly sorry, he said, but further conversation is point-
    less. Perhaps you can convince the Americans to assist you.
    Ghost Rider over and out.
     And then there was nothing but static.
     Lewitt felt a warm presence next to him. Then a hand
    reached past his shoulder. Before he could react, Uwe Aache-
    ner snatched up the Colt from the desktop where Lewitt had
    placed it. When he looked up at him, Aachener's face was im-
    passive.
     Orvitz's mouth trembled. For the first time since they had
    met, the man who had pretended to be Paul Dooley was abso-
    lutely speechless.
     Lewitt swallowed a hard, dry lump in his throat. He toggled
    the vox switch. "Ghost Rider, this is Blue Falcon. Please re-
    spond, over."
     Aachener studied the gun in his hand. Then he returned it
    to the desk and took a few steps back. He crossed his arms
    and stared at Lewitt.
     "Ghost Rider, please come in." Lewitt stared at the TV
    monitor. Two astronauts were stepping off the elevator; nei-
    ther of them headed toward the camera. "Please come in,
    over."
     He waited. No reply. "This is Blue Falcon, please come in."
     The static on the comlink was broken once more, for only
    an instant, by a sound that resembled distant laughter, as if
    echoing across space from a remote galaxy.
     And then they heard nothing else except their own voices,
    until the oxygen supply finally began to run out.
     By then, they had settled the question of who would use the
    gun first.

    




    From The Washington Post; February 23, 1995
    
                      Lunar Mission Survivors Safely Return,
                         Recount Sudden Death on the Moon
                               By Timothy S. Smith
                              Special Correspondent
    
    V,
    
     SPACE STATION ONE-Three days after lifting off from Tranquillity
    Base, the U.S.S. Conestogo arrived in Earth orbit, bringing with it the two
    sole survivors of the American-German lunar expedition that came to a
    disastrous end when a freak electrical fire swept through the Teal Falcon
    military complex.
     The two NASA astronauts, Com. Eugene M. Parnell and Capt. Cristine
    S. Ryer, were taken off the returning moonship in what space station
    doctors described as "stable and satisfactory condition." They were hur-
    hed to the Wheel's infirmary to receive treatment for extensive second-
    degree bums, minor sprains and contusions, prolonged effects of smoke
    inhalation, and acute exhaustion.
     In a brief interview several hours after his arrival, commander Parnell
    told reporters of the blaze that swept through the underground bunker
    just as his team was preparing to launch six Minutemen 11 missiles.
     "it was horrible," he said, speaking from his bed in the station infirmary.
    "Everything seemed to go up at once. We were lucky to get out of there
    alive."
     Captain Ryer said, "There was no way we could get anyone else out.
    Gene and I were fortunate that we were able to make it to the airlock in
    time ... it was terrifying, just awful."
     "I'm sorr/ that nobody else got out alive," said Space Station One
    Commander Joseph K. Laughlin of the accident which killed five astro-
    nauts, as well as ATS television correspondents Berkley Rhodes and Alex
    Bromleigh. "It was a terrible tragedy ... I'm just glad that two people
    managed to make it out, safe and sound."
     NASA spokesmen were unable to give an exact reason for the cause
    of the fire. They said that the leading theory is that old electrical cables
    within the twenty-six-year-old military installation may have decayed,
    causing a fatal short-circuit during activation of the launch-control systems
    that were supposed to fire the missiles last Sunday.
     Until further investigation, however, the space agency is not willing to
    commit itself to any specific explanation....
    
    14~

    




    T-W-E-N-T-Y-T-W-0
    
    2122/95 -1152 GMT
    
                          fter he had been interviewe
    by the reporters who had flown up from the Cape, the docto
    ushered them out of the infirmary. Once they were gone, Pai
    nell detached the cosmetic IV line that led beneath his band
    aged right arm, pushed aside the sheets, and swung his leg
    over the side of the bed, demonstrating an ability to walk url
    assisted that ran contrary to the story that had been fed to th
    press.
     "How much longer am I going to have to wear this stuff?
    He rubbed his left hand over the bandages. "They itch lik
    crazy."
     "Not too much longer," Joe Laughlin said. He was standin
    at the back of the room, where he had silently watched th
    entire orchestrated affair. "When we fly you down to KSC t(
    morrow, you and Cris will be taken off the orbiter in stretcl.
    ers. There'll be camera crews, of course, but neither of yo
    have to say anything if you don't want to."
     "Is she talking to them now?" Parnell nodded toward tb
    closed door of the intensive care unit.
     "Yeah. She's following the same script." Old Joe smiled
    his friend's astonishment. "Don't be so shocked. She's gc
    more to lose than you do, trying to pull that stunt with tb

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    289
    
    virus program. This way at least she gets off clean ... so long
    as she sticks to the official version."
     As the doctor-who really wasn't a doctor, but the CIA case
    officer who had debriefed Parnell and Ryer after they brought
    Conestoga back to the Wheel-fetched a plastic cup of water
    from the sink, Laughlin put his left foot up on a chair and tied
    the laces of his sneakers. "She still hasn't told us everything
    about that disk," he went on. "We still don't know why she
    was carrying it. Do you know anything about it?"
     Parnell hesitated. He didn't particularly want to squeal on
    Cris-she had saved his life, after all-but he knew that the
    boys from Langley would eventually get at the truth. Better
    they heard it from a reliable source; this way he could vouch
    for her and perhaps ease the repercussions.
     "Yeah, she gave me the whole story on the way home,"
    Gene replied. "it contains a nasty little bug called Dr. Doo-
    little. . ."
     "Because it talks to the animals?"
     "Just a pun. Do little ... get it?" Laughlin rolled his eyes
    and Parnell went on. "Anyway, she picked it up from some
    college kid at Florida State, a computer hacker she managed
    to track down somehow. The kid thought she was just a dis-
    gruntled employee from a local company who wanted to fuck
    up the in-house computer system, so he gave it to her. Your
    typical campus prank."
     "Yeah, right." Old Joe shook his head. The CIA man, who
    had identified himself only as Mr. Taylor, stood quietly
    nearby, undoubtedly memorizing everything for his report.
    "Used to be that a college prank meant putting a bunch of pigs
    in the dean's office."
     "Anyway," Parnell went on, "she was planning to install it
    in the computers at Teal Falcon and the base just before we
    left. The idea was to screw things up so that when Koenig
    Selenen took possession of the base, they'd find that none of
    the computers were operational. No one could have proved
    she was responsible, if they even suspected her."
     Gene looked straight at Taylor. "It was supposed to be her
    revenge for getting dismissed from the Air Force. Nothing to

    




    ALLEN STEELE
    
    do with ... y'know, everything else that happened." Taylor
    nodded his head in a neutral way, but said nothing. "It was
    fortunate that she had that disk," Parnell asserted. "Other-
    wise. . . " He fell silent.
     Laughlin coughed in his hand, "Anyway, to answer your
    question, you guys get to take off the bandages when you ar-
    rive at the Cape infirmary. As far as the media's concerned,
    you're going to be recovering from ... uh ...
     "Second-degree burns, multiple cuts and contusions, mild
    smoke inhalation, acute exhaustion," Taylor said, handing
    the water he'd fetched to Parnell. "Don't worry, Commander,
    we won't keep you in the hospital for long. In two or three
    days we'll let you go home. You'll have recovered by then."
     Parnell drank the water in silence. in two or three days, Tay-
    lor's colleagues at the Cape would have also learned every-
    thing they needed to know about what really happened in the
    bunker, and the "accidental fire" at Teal Falcon that had
    claimed the lives of most of the expedition would have faded
    to the back pages. When it came to rigging plausible cover
    stories, the CIA stood second to none.
     He wondered what would happen to Cris. But he'd said and
    done everything that he could, at least for now.
     "So until then, I stay here and play sick." He shrugged and
    put the water aside. "Do you think I could at least have a real
    drink? Or am I too sick to be seen drinking whiskey?"
     Taylor shook his head. "Sorry, Commander, but you've got
    to remain here so long as we've got the press aboard. You
    can't. . . "
     "Naw. Don't worry about them." Laughlin sauntered over
    to the bed and gave Parnell a fond slap on his bare knee.
    "We've put them in the VIP area. Soon as they're gone from
    this section, Gene can stretch his legs a bit."
     He winked broadly. "in fact, I think can get him to my office
    without being seen. A little R&R is just what the patient
    needs, don't you think?"
     Taylor looked uncertain. He was under orders to keep Par-
    nell and Ryer under close watch until the heat died down.
    Before he could protest, however, Laughlin grasped his

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    291
    
    friend's arm and helped him off the hospital bed. "C'mon,
    buddy ... put on your trousers and I'll buy you a drink."
     "Commander Laughlin..." Taylor began.
     Old Joe gave him a look that shut the young man up. "He
    needs a drink and a walk," he said softly. "So just go empty a
    bedpan or something, okay?"
     The CIA officer didn't like it, but he wasn't in command of
    the station. Besides, he needed to moderate Ryer's press ap-
    pearance. There was little he could do to physically prevent
    Parnell from being sneaked out of the infirmary. Taylor nod-
    ded his head, then exited the room.
     Once Gene was dressed, Laughlin escorted him through a
    hatch and down a ladder, where they followed a vacant corri-
    dor through Level B. "Nice touch," Parnell said softly as they
    walked through the upward-curving hallway. "Take me to
    your office, indeed. . . "
     Laughlin grinned. "Couldn't have been done in the old days.
    Remember when we had resident spooks aboard?" He shook
    his head. "These young ones couldn't find the john without a
    map.//
     He stopped at the hatch leading to the Earth Observation
    Center. He laid his hand on the handle, but didn't open it.
    "But you've got to promise me one thing," Laughlin whis-
    pered. "When they put you under the bright lights, you don't
    breathe a word about what I'm going to show you. Under-
    stand? "
     Mystified, Parnell nodded. No longer smiling, Laughlin
    opened the door and led Parnell into the dimly lit compart-
    ment.
     Old Joe went straight to the bank of TV monitors. "You
    know where I keep the bottle. Help yourself." He checked his
    watch, consulted the clocks arranged above the screens, then
    began to work the ISPY master control panel. "We're right on
    time."
     Parnell hesitated, then opened the locker and pulled out the
    Maker's Mark and a pair of shot glasses. One of the wall
    clocks told him that it was about 9:25 P.m. in North Korea.
    According to the little that Taylor had told him, the Zenith
    had landed just eight hours ago at the hidden rocket base in

    




    292
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    the country's northern highlands, shortly before he and Ryer
    had managed to guide Conestoga safely back to its orbital han-
    gar. The spacecraft was probably back in its assembly build-
    ing, where technicians were unloading the nukes its crew had
    stolen from the Teal Falcon silos.
     However, ISPY wasn't over Southeast Asia. According to its
    ground track on the electronic map board, the orbital tele-
    scope was above the western United States, its footprint
    swinging down across northern California into southern Ne-
    vada. Long morning shadows stretched out across the Sierra
    Nevada; according to the clock, local time was 7:35 A.m. RMT.
     Parnell's hand paused on the cap of the whiskey bottle.
    What the hell ... ?
     As if he could read his thoughts, Laughlin spoke softly from
    the console. "You must have heard of this place," he said, not
    looking up from the keyboard and dials. "Groom Lake. Area
    5 1. Dreamland ... whatever you want to call it, it's there.
    One of the best-kept secrets in the free world. At least that's
    what they say."
     "Yeah. I've heard about it." Parnell watched the screens as
    ISPY's cameras swept across the high-mountain desert north-
    west of Las Vegas. Everything from the U-2 and the SR-71 spy
    planes to the F- 117 and the B-2 Stealth attack craft had been
    flight-tested from there. Not so much of a secret now, after
    the press had blown the lid off a couple of years ago, with
    reports of odd noises coming from the secret landing strip.
     "What about it?"
     "Wait a second ... okay." On the high-resolution screen, a
    long airstrip had appeared. The camera tracked across paved
    tarmac, passing rows of hangars, offices, and warehouses.
     "Now," Laughlin said, pointing at the bottom of"the screen.
    "Look there, quick."
     Parnell stepped closer to the screen, peering at the spot
    where Laughlin was pointing. Captured for a few moments
    within ISPY's focal lens was a large, dartlike shape.
     Or, rather, two shapes: a silver form similar to an F417,
    mounted atop a larger, black craft which vaguely resembled
    an SR-71. "That's Aurora," Laughlin said, tapping the screen
    with his fingertip. "The bottom craft is the mother ship, Sen-

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    293
    
    ior Citizen. It takes the bird on top up to high altitude, where
    it lets go. The little bastard on top is code-named Thunder
    Dart ... it climbs to suborbit with scramiets."
     Parnell nodded. "The new recon plane. I've heard the sto-
    ries . . ."
     "C'mon, Gene. You think we'd scrap the Blackbird just to
    build another recon plane?" Laughlin stepped away from the
    console, picked up the whiskey bottle, and poured himself a
    shot. "It's capable of reaching low orbit in minutes, and it can
    be anywhere in the world within an hour. Usually they only
    fly it at night, to avoid anyone getting a good look at it. Now,
    why do you think they'd haul it out of the hangar in broad
    daylight? "
     Parnell stared at the image on the screen. No, it didn't make
    much sense to wheel Aurora out of its hangar at this time of
    day if it was just another test flight. Dreamland's secrecy had
    already been compromised by too many curious people watch-
    ing from adjacent foothills; when the Air Force wanted to test
    one of its black planes, it did so under the cover of darkness.
     He looked up at the clocks again. But over in North Korea,
    lt was a dark, moonless night ...
     "Now let me ask you something else," Old Joe said. He
    poured a shot of liquor into another glass and off ered it to
    Parnell. "Doesn't it seem peculiar, knowing all that we do
    now, that the CIA ignored everything I told them about the
    North Korean launch site?"
     Parnell accepted the glass. On the screen, Area 51 was al-
    ready passing from sight, lost as ISPY began to fly over Utah.
    "Maybe not," he said, not accepting the lie even as he re-
    peated it. "They might have known about it, but just didn't
    let on."
     Laughlin shrugged. "You got a point. They didn't trust me.
    But does it make sense that British and German intelligence
    caught wind of this conspiracy, but didn't let the Americans
    know?"
     He tossed back the shot of whiskey and hissed between his
    teeth. "SIS went so far as to put Leamore on this mission. Do
    you really believe, for even a second, that the Brits wouldn't
    
    I
    
    11

    




    294
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    let our guys know that they thought someone wanted to steal
    some American nukes?"
     Laughlin picked up the bottle and poured another shot.
    "When Dr. Z told me about what Gabrielle Blumfield had told
    him, I went straight to the CIA. They ignored me. Poppa Dog
    saw something lift off from Earth when y'all launched from
    orbit. He told me about it later, and I tried to tell NASA and
    the CIA, and they still ignored me. Now ... do you really
    think all those sharp minds back home are that stupid?"
     Parnell didn't reply. He tried to sip his own whiskey, but his
    hand was trembling too much. It splattered across his chin,
    and he wiped it off with the back of his left hand. "Maybe
    they were. . . "
     He stumbled, unable to complete the thought that had en-
    tered his mind. It was too much, the idea that so much had
    been risked, so many lives had been put in danger-and ulti-
    mately lost-simply because of the same old games that had
    been waged and lost before.
     And yet, and still ...
     The shot glass slipped from his fingers.
     He barely noticed when it hit the floor, splashing liquor
    across the carpet.
     "They knew," he murmured. "They knew about every-
    thing."
     Both men were silent for a moment; then Laughlin bent
    down and picked up the glass. He refilled it from the bottle
    and passed it to his friend. "The plan was rigged from both
    ends," he said quietly. "The Koreans weren't the only ones
    carrying an ace up their sleeve. Sometime today or tomorrow,
    we're probably going to hear about an oil refinery in North
    Korea blowing up. Lots of lives lost. Very tragic. . . "
     Laughlin sighed as he settled down in a chair. "Yknow,
    though, the real bitch isn't whether or not some third-rate
    country gets the bomb or not. These days, anyone can do that.
    That's simple stuff. But the fact that the same technology we
    could have used to take back the Moon, put a colony on Mars,
    maybe even . . . "
     "I know. You don't have to lecture me." This time, Parnell
    managed to drink his whiskey without spilling it. Nonethe-

    




    ft
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    29S
    
    less, it took a lot of courage just to swallow past the bile
    which had risen in his throat.
     He had just caught a glimpse of an aircraft that was capable
    of rendering NASA's space fleet obsolete. It remained a classi-
    fied secret tucked away in a hangar on a desert airstrip.
     Games within games. Lies within lies. Meanwhile, the fu-
    ture is slowly lost, like one speck of sand moving past the last
    one, through an hourglass that can never be set upright again.
     "Sorry. Didn't mean to get on a high horse." Laughlin
    reached for the bottle. He offered it to Parnell, who shook his
    head. "Still, it kind of makes you wonder," he continued,
    pouring another finger of whiskey into his glass. "I mean,
    what might have happened if things had gone differently."
     "That's bullshit." Gene finished the half-inch of brown li-
    quor in his glass. He looked over his shoulder at the TV
    screen, watching as Earth passed serenely beneath his feet. It
    was a moot point, the type of question only a drunk old man
    would raise.
     History can't be changed.

    





    




    0
    
    E - P - I - L - 0 - G - U - E
    
    4/12195 -2031 EST
    
                          - nother beach, another house,
    another party: this time not a pre-launch barbecue at the
    Cape, but a small evening get-together with a couple of new
    friends at Gene Parnell's home on Captiva.
     As the Gulf sunset tinted the waters of Pine Island Sound
    with color like autumn leaves, Gene grilled swordfish on the
    patio hibachi, watching Cris and Laurell as they stood lookout
    on the beach for the dolphins that sometimes played in the
    inlet at sundown. They had driven down from Titusville the
    day before, and although he and Judith had offered them the
    guest room, the two women had politely demurred, preferring
    to stay at a hotel on the mainland. They said that it was be-
    cause they wanted to catch a Cardinals spring-training game
    in Fort Meyers on Saturday and had to leave early Monday
    morning in order to make their flight to Germany out of Or-
    lando later that evening,
     Still, Gene couldn't help wondering if it was because Cris
    felt uncomfortable about having Laurell with her, even
    though he and Judy had invited them both.
     "Don't worry about it," Judith murmured, reading his
    mind. She stood nearby, tossing salad in a wooden bowl.
    "They're a young couple, that's all. They want their privacy."
    
    t,
    
    I

    




    298
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
     "Helen never had any problem bringing her boyfriend
    here. . ."
     "That's because Helen's your daughter," Judith said. "Look
    at it this way ... wouldn't you have felt strange about having
    your girlfriend spend the night with you at the boss's house?"
     "Ex-boss, you mean," he replied.
     A sudden shout from the beach brought his head up. Cris
    and Laurell were pointing to where a dolphin had jumped.
    Cris glanced over her shoulder at him; she was letting her hair
    grow out, and in that instant when the breeze caught it and
    blew it in front of her smiling face, he realized what a beauti-
    ful woman she was.
     "And in my case," he added, still watching her, "it would
    have been my boyfriend. . . "
     A stifled giggle from Judy. He caught a glimpse of her grin
    before she covered it with her hand. "Why, Gene," she whis-
    pered. "You never told me you swung both ways."
     If they didn't have guests present, he might have thrown his
    spatula at her.
     As nervous as he had been about meeting Laurell-Judith
    had no reservations whatsoever-the evening went smoothly.
    Before dinner they sat around the patio table, sipping Scotch-
    and-water and watching the sun go down through the palms,
    chatting idly about the Cards, a minor hurricane that had hit
    Key West last week, the alligator that sometimes paid a visit
    to the Parnells' backyard from the nearby swamp. Over black-
    ened swordfish and Italian salad they discussed Cris's upcom-
    ing job interview in Germany; if Koenig Selenen offered her
    the job, she and Laurell planned to temporarily relocate to
    Bonn for her training period, then eventually move to French
    Guiana, where they would live near the launch center.
     That was as close as they got to talking about space, though.
    Cris avoided any mention of NASA or her old job, and when
    talk of Koenig Selenen inevitably wandered toward the Tran-
    quillity Base mission, Judith tactfully changed the topic to the
    burgeoning real estate development on Captiva. Which tuffied
    out to be an unfortunate faux pas, since Laurell's law firm
    was representing a developer who wanted to buy seventy-five
    acres of wetland on the island's gulf shore and transform it

    




    300
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    nodded her head. "Thanks, Gene," she said, "but you kno
    isn't true."
     "No way," he said, shaking his head. "You saved my life
    there, got us both back alive. We wouldn't be here now i
    wasn't for you." Another moment of uncertainty. "M
    Uncle Sam doesn't see it that way, but. . . "
     "Let's not talk about it." It seemed to him that her e
    glistened a little as she snapped off her Timex, put it i
    pocket of her summer skirt, and wrapped the Rolex aro
    her left wrist. "Uncle Sam and I have our problems, but th
    not between you and me."
     At least, not any longer.
     He picked up his glass and jiggled haff-melted ice c
    around in the tiny bit of Scotch left. No apologies had b
    left unspoken during the long voyage back from Tranquill
    Base. If Koenig Selenen was able to forgive Cristine Ryer
    offering her a job as a lunar pilot with its private space p
    gram, so Cris could forgive him for distrusting her during
    Conestoga mission.
     This was a going-away party, after all. For both of the
    His NASA career was formally over, and her new life was j
    beginning. While he played around with his Beechcr
    worked on perfecting his stroke at the Sanibel Golf Club,
    tried to keep his son out of trouble, she would be flying G
    man spacecraft to the Moon. There was still a frontier to
    settled, and giving her a watch was only another way of pa
    ing the torch.
     And neither of them, either publicly or privately, wo
    ever discuss what had really occurred in the Teal Falcon b
    ker. Except for Judith, Laurell, and a few people on a stric
    need-to-know basis in the intelligence community, no
    would ever learn the truth. Even if anyone else happened
    read the inscription on the back of Cris's watch, it could eas
    be explained away as an expression of heartfelt appreciati
    from a former commander to his former first officer.
     There is history, and there is truth, and the two seldom' h
    much in common with each other....
     But, he thought as he gazed at the gold watch, perhaps th
    is still enough time for history to be changed.

    




    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE    301
    
    1~
    
     "Thanks Gene," she said.
     "Thank ~ou, Cris," he replied, tipping his glass to her. "I
    hope you and Laurell have a good life together."
     Judith and Laurell returned with key lime pie and coffee,
    and not long afterward the party broke up. They made their
    farewells in front of the house; Cris and Gene gave each other
    a final hug, then she and Laurell climbed into their DeLorean
    and backed down the driveway to the main road. Gene and
    Judith waved goodbye as they watched them leave, then went
    inside to finish cleaning up.
     Judith was still washing dishes when Gene poured himself
    another finger of Scotch and quietly took it out to the patio.
    Once the counters were scrubbed and the leftovers put away,
    Judith went out to see what he was doing.
     She found him sprawled in a lawn chair, his eyes closed, his
    hands still nestling his Scotch against his belly which gently
    rose and fell with each slumbering breath he took. Judith con-
    sidered waking him, but decided that he was content where
    he lay. Instead, she went inside to get a blanket and, after
    gently prying the glass out of his hands, she laid the blanket
    over him.
     Then she went inside, shut the doors, and turned off the
    patio lights, letting him sleep in the light of the rising moon.

    





    




    A-F-T
    
    E-R-W-0-R-D
    
    I
                         he Tranquillity Alternative is
    a continuation of two short stories I wrote several years ago:
    "John Harper Wilson," first published in the June 1989 issue
    of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and its prequel,
    "Goddard's People," published in the July 1991 issue of that
    same magazine and in What Might Have Been, Vol. III, edited
    by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg (Bantam, 1991).
    An early, substantially different version of "Goddard's Peo-
    ple," titled "Operation Blue Horizon," was published in the
    September 1988 issue of Worcester Monthly, a now-defunct
    city magazine.
     Both "Goddard's People" and "John Harper Wilson" are in-
    cluded in my collection Rude Astronauts. This novel is inde-
    pendent of those stories, however; they simply relate
    background events behind the alternative timeline that forms
    the basis of this story. Many thanks to Gardner Dozois and
    Sheila Williams at Asimov's, and Michael Warshaw at
    Worcester Monthly, for publishing the original stories.
     Likewise, it should be pointed out that most of the technol-
    ogy depicted in this novel is not entirely the product of the
    author's imagination. The ferry rockets, Space Station One,
    the MP-13 retriever rocket, the lunar base and other hardware
    were invented in the 1950s and detailed in some keystone

    




    304
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    nonfiction works of that bygone era: Across the Space Frontier
    ~Viking, 1952) and Conquest of the Moon (Viking, 1953), both
    edited by Cornelius Ryan; The Exploration of Mars, by Willy
    Ley and Wernher von Braun (Viking, 1956). These books were
    drawn from the historic Collier's space series which ran be-
    tween 1952 and 1956. Many thanks to the staff of the St. Louis
    City Library for helping me locate its bound copies of these
    magazines.
     Rockets through Space, by Lester del Rey (Fawcett/Premier,
    1960) and Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, by Willy Ley
    (Viking, 1951) were other important contemporary sources.
     Two recent books about the history of spaceflight have
    served as invaluable references: Blueprint for Space, by Freder-
    ick 1. Ordway III and Randy Liebermann (Smithsonian Institu-
    tion Press, 1992) and The Dream Machines, by Ron Miller
    (Krieger Publishing, 1993), both highly recommended. Many
    thanks to Ron for his enthusiastic support of this project and
    for pointing me in the right direction.
     While I was researching this novel, the Glencoe Model
    Company reissued several plastic scale-model kits of space-
    craft based upon the designs documented in those books, com-
    plete with technical specs. At about the same time, I located
    an out-of -production model o ' f the "space taxi" Willy Ley pro-
    posed in 1959. Some of these models were written into this
    novel, although I took liberties with the internal details.
    Thanks to Chris Merseal and the late Dot Hill at CRM Hob-
    bies in St. Louis for their assistance and suggestions.
     During World War 11, upon the proposal of Dr. Eugen Sanger
    of the Luftwaffe institute, the Nazis briefly considered build-
    ing a manned suborbital spacecraft called the "Amerika
    Bomber." Details of this spacecraft can be found in Rockets,
    Missiles, and Space Travel and "The High-Flying Legacy of
    Eugen Sanger" by Helmut Muller (Air & Space, August/Sep-
    tember 1987). 1 also wish to thank my old friend and neighbor,
    Joe Thompson, Jr., who flew recon missions over Peenemun4e
    during the war, for sharing his memories with me.
     During the late fifties the U.S. Air Force seriously consid-
    ered placing nuclear missiles on the Moon. "Securing the
    High Ground" by William E. Burrows (Air & Space, December

    




    1 0
    
    THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE
    
    1993/January 1994) was one source of information; more de-
    tails were obtained from articles published in Aviation Week
    during 1958 and 1959, and in Science Digest, May 1958.
     At this writing, the Air Force's "Aurora" program is still a
    
    closely guarded military secret, although a number of articles
    concerning a hypersonic aerospacecraft have been published
    in newspapers and magazines over the last couple of years.
    Aurora, by Bill Sweetman (Motorbooks Mil-Tech Series, 1993)
    is recommended as a comprehensive rundown of this "black
    plane" project.
     While filling in the fine details of the alternate history be-
    hind this novel, I opened a folder on the science fiction board
    formerly sponsored by Asimov's Science Fiction on the
    America Online computer network and asked for suggestions.
    Several AOL subscribers responded to my request, and some
    of their remarks made their way into this book. For their
    involvement in this experiment in reader participation, I wish
    to thank Patterner, ASterling, Spacer 9704, Surf Nut, Jimmysd
    and Billbeau. Keep on posting, guys.
     Many thanks to Kevin J. Anderson, Lizz Caplan, Nicola
    Griffith, Kelly Eskridge, Frank Jacobs, Kenneth Jobe, Marilee
    J. Layman, Eugene Moore, George Olive, Henry Tiedemann,
    and Mark W. Tiedemann, for their expert knowledge and in-
    sights.
     Special thanks, as always, go to my wife, Linda, my agent,
    Martha Millard, and Ginjer Buchanan, Susan Allison, and
    Carol Lowe at Ace.
     One aspect of this novel that may be controversial among
    space aficionados is whether the United States had the tech-
    nological capability to launch a manned spacecraft in 1944,
    thereby shortcutting almost two decades of "real" history. I'll
    leave it to historians, scientists, and engineers to debate this
    point, but this I can safely claim as fact: when Robert A. God-
    dard was a physics professor at Clark College in Worcester,
    Massachusetts, he secretly researched manned space travel.
    His notebooks, hidden in a file cabinet within a folder labeled
    i1gunpowder experiments," contained detailed studies for
    spaceplanes, gyroscopic steering systems, radiation protection
    of astronauts, even a rudimentary form of atomic propulsion

    




    I I
    
    306
    
    ALLEN STEELE
    
    . . . all written during 1928, thirty years before NASA
    launched Explorer 1 into orbit.
     Many thanks to Dorothy Mosokowski, the curator of the
    Goddard Archives at Clark University, for showing me Dr.
    Goddard's notebooks and for telling me how to find the hill-
    top site on Pakachoag Hill in Auburn, Massachusetts, where
    he launched the world's first liquid-fuel rocket, and where the
    inspiration for this novel first came to me.
    
    -October 1993-May 1994
     St. Louis, Missouri

    




    I
    
    ---- lwmmwwww~llz

    





    




   "With The Tranquillity Alternative, Allen
    Steele warns us of the bitter harvest
    reaped by intolerance, and of the losses
    Incurred by us all when the humanity
    of colleagues and friends is willfully
    ignored."
    -Nicola Griffith, author of Ammonite
    
   ALLEN STEELE is the bestselling author of
    Orbital Decay; Clarke County, Space;
    Lunar Descent; Labyrinth of Night (a
    novel based on his award-winning
    Asimov's Science Fiction story, "Red
    Planet Mars"); and The Jericho Iteration.
    He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
    
    Jacket design by Judith Murello
    Jacket painting by Bob Eggleton
    Copyright @ 1996
    
    I
    
            A
                              AN ACE SCIENCE FICTION
                                 AND FANTASY BOOK
                           The Berkley Publishing Group
                                200 Madison Avenue
                               New York, NY 100 16
                                       3/96