Back to the Moon (28 page)

Perlman used a key card to enter a blast door. Stepping through, he entered a short tunnel, low enough that he had to lean against his cane, one step at a time, careful not to bump his head. On the other side a steel gangplank led to an oval-shaped cavern that had once housed the
Minuteman III
launch control center. The Egg, as its crew had called it, had been empty for over a decade. Another key card was required for the next blast door and he used it, the massive structure swinging easily on its well-oiled hinges to reveal a huge room. In it was Perlman's baby, the world's first working fusion reactor, capable alone of providing all the power needed by Montana, Idaho, and Utah. But there was an If. A big If. If it had the fuel it needed.

Most Americans had never heard of fusion energy. But it was, Perlman believed, actually their only hope for the future. Hydrocarbon fuel was going to be exhausted within a few decades. Geothermal, solar, and wind energy would never be able to take up the slack. Nuclear energy was too difficult to keep safe. Chernoble, Three Mile Island, and Sorkiyov had proved that. The world, in fact, was heading toward slow-motion disaster. Perlman believed that the governments of the world, especially the United States government, had known about the impending crisis for some decades but had suppressed it politically for short-term political gain. Why distress the people when everything seemed to be going so well? Why not let the next administration worry about it? And then the next?

The World Energy Treaty had been the answer everyone around the world seemed to grab as the solution. The treaty couldn't put a drop of oil back in the ground, nor provide a kilowatt of energy, yet it was supposed to solve the world's energy problems. All it was going to do was set up a bureaucracy that would ration energy as it started to become more scarce. WET was a coming disaster.

Perlman shook his shaggy head in exasperation as he limped down the hall. Here was the solution. Physics and chemistry, that's all it was. Quite simple, really. Fusion was the energy released when hydrogen atoms—or some isotope of this simplest of all elements—combined to form helium. More energy is required to hold two hydrogen atoms together than one helium atom. Push the two hydrogen atoms together, create helium, and energy is released. Simple. But sometimes, simplicity was difficult to create.

For decades scientists the world over had tried to make fusion work. It was the heavier isotopes of hydrogen that had shown the most promise for controlled fusion reactions. All that was required was to heat them up to approximately three times the temperature of the core of the sun—about a hundred million degrees—contain them in a plasma state, and extract all the resulting energy. But a workable plant always seemed another decade away. It was as if all of the scientists in the fusion community were like Prometheus trying and failing to steal fire from the gods. Perlman looked around his creation with much satisfaction. Here, they had done it, he and his scientists and engineers had stolen the fire.

A big cylinder on one side of the room necked down to a cone in its center and then expanded back to a larger cylinder that curved down into a square hole in the concrete floor. Farther on there was a huge turbine that spun an electric generator. A hundred feet above, a vent, hidden behind a small hillock, released the only residue of the reaction, pure water in the form of steam. There was no residual radioactivity. The only things produced were energy and water. It was the perfect power plant, the solution to cheap, safe energy.

For years Perlman had tried to gain financial support for his radical idea to make fusion work. Finally, miraculously, he'd received support from an organization called the January Group. He'd brought twenty unemployed fusion scientists out of Russia and the United States and France and Italy to the desolate Montana prairie and, within three years, was prepared for a full-scale test. Perlman's approach required a powerful laser and a particular fuel, an isotope known as helium-3. But with helium-3 there was bad news and good news. The bad news was that the isotope was rare, at least on earth. The good news was that it was abundant almost everywhere else in the solar system. In fact, Perlman had used the small amount of helium-3 that he'd gathered from
Apollo
moon rocks to test the concept. In the lab, at least, it had worked.

Encouraged, the January Group gave him more money. Perlman built a full-scale fusion plant, used the isotope left from
Apollo
to test it. The plant worked—perfectly. To go into production all Perlman needed was more helium-3. The best place to get it was where he'd gotten his sample: the moon. But when he'd asked NASA for help, the space agency had, in effect, laughed at him. The Washington space weenie who'd answered his letters had said, in effect, that NASA was no longer in the business of going to the moon. “For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow,” Perlman muttered, quoting Job, his favorite biblical prophet.

He'd heard about Jack Medaris through a friend in the aerospace industry. Medaris was a man who loved a challenge, could be audacious. Now, it had come to all this. WET was going to be approved in a few days. After that, Perlman would have to scrap his plant. The only hope was Medaris and Perlman had no idea what was happening. There had been almost a complete press blackout on the events in space.

Charlie Bowman, a mechanic, was the only other worker with Perlman at the site. He'd volunteered to keep Perlman company and pull maintenance on the plant. “Dr. Perlman,” Bowman greeted him warmly. “I replaced the thermocouples on the heat exchangers this morning on boiler number two. Probably didn't need it but I didn't trust them after they got so hot during the test. Just routine. Everything else is up to snuff.”

“Thank you, Charlie. You all right?”

Bowman, a big, friendly man with close-set eyes perched above a bulbous nose, put his thumbs under the straps of his big overalls and pulled on them. He grinned. “You know me, Doc. As long as I've got some machinery to tinker with, I'm happy as a bug in a rug.”

“How happy would that be?” Perlman asked, amused.

Charlie scratched his head, taking Perlman's question seriously. “Well, I reckon a bug'd be warm inside a carpet, get plenty to eat, have things to do. Just like me. Not much left to want out of life.”

Perlman smiled and nodded, pleased that he'd picked Charlie to stay with him. All the others, the physicists, chemists, machinists, and engineers, had long since gone home, disappointed, convinced that their work was not going to ever be properly appreciated. “I'm glad you're with me, Charlie.”

Charlie shrugged and went off, pulling a rag out of his hip pocket and disappearing into a maze of steam pipes. Perlman chuckled and then crossed the floor to a curtained cubicle. Inside, on a table, was a glass tube of what appeared to be an orange powder. He held it up to the light, admiring the translucent, glowing material within. It looked magical and it was. The powder—actually microscopic-sized glass spheres—had been brought back by the
Apollo 17
crew, inside it was a host of volatiles, including a pure elixir of helium-3.

The huge picture of the moon on the wall of Perlman's office reminded him of when he'd shown Jack Medaris where the
Apollo 17
crew had found the powder. Perlman had been surprised at Medaris's reaction. The engineer, until then unsure about taking on Perlman's quest, had suddenly gone pale. “Do you believe in fate, Dr. Perlman?” he asked. “Do you believe we all have a destiny? Until this moment I doubted mine.”

In all the time he'd known him, Perlman had not asked Medaris what he'd meant by that. He wished now that he had.

A telephone buzzed in the clean room but Perlman let it ring. The recorder would pick it up, pass the message along that the silo was locked up tight. As far as the outside world was concerned, nobody was home. Then the phone stopped abruptly in midring. Perlman picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. A movement on a television monitor beside the table startled Perlman. It was connected to a camera topside, beside the main entrance. Perlman saw two men dressed in what appeared to be black fatigues. They were investigating the entranceway at the primary elevator. They walked, out of sight of the camera, and then returned to the door. Perlman used the monitor's joystick to direct the camera to zoom in on a shoulder patch on one of the men. It said
PUCKETT SECURITY SERVICES
. He remembered Jack's warning the day before the launch, to look out for men wearing this patch. The camera continued to track them as they trudged off across the parking lot. They had come in a big jeeplike vehicle, a Humvee, Perlman thought it was called. The men drove the Humvee down the road, through the open gate of the silo perimeter fence.

Perlman's breath caught in his throat. He hadn't counted on this. Perlman heard metal on metal somewhere deep in the maze of steam pipes. “Charlie?” he called. “Would you mind coming here? I think we may have a situation.”

Houston, You Are the Problem

Bonner couldn't go home. The media had staked out his house. He couldn't even go to the Rawhide, try to numb with Jack D his disappointment in
Endeavour
's failure. He was camping out in his office with firm orders to Public Affairs to say nothing, zero,
nada.
He had to think about what to do next. It was no mystery to him what had happened. Jack Medaris was heading for the moon. He didn't have to wait for the tranjectory analysis to be done. “Medaris, you bastard,” Bonner seethed. There had to be a way to stop him.

The phone rang. Bonner had expected a call from the vice president but was surprised that it was from Bernie Sykes. “Hold, please,” the White House operator said, “for your call from Baghdad.”

Sykes came on-line. He was obviously agitated. “What a damn screwup, Frank! The president of Iraq tried to be nice about it but I could tell he was amused. “Perhaps my scientists can be of service?' he asked the President. Can you imagine how that made us feel? I told the President I had the greatest confidence in you and now he's getting laughed at by Third World dictators!”

Bonner was out of his chair, pacing. “Bernie, Grant did her best.” He stopped. “I gave her the gas canister that came from the contractor you recommended. The word I got was that it exploded.”

“Had to be a defect, Frank,” Sykes replied, softening his tone a bit. “You think I would want some kind of bloody disaster up there? Look, you got anything else up your sleeve?”

Bonner hated to confess the truth. “
Columbia
went for escape velocity, Frank. They're out of my reach until they come back.”

“Escape. . . what do you mean?”

“I mean they're on their way to the moon.”

The line was silent for a moment. “Listen, Frank, you need help. I'm going to get you some. I'm going to send you a consultant. A man who is used to playing big games in the shadows, if you know what I mean.”

Bonner frowned, started his pacing again. “Are you talking about some kind of secret agent, Bernie? I don't think I need that. I'm going to call a meeting, talk to my managers. We can still handle this. Wherever
Columbia
's going, the one certain thing is she's going to come back. We just have to figure out where and grab her as she flies in.”

“No. This has gotten too big now,” Sykes said grimly. “Cooperate with my consultant, okay? His name's Puckett, Carl Puckett. One hell of a guy and knows a lot of things you don't. Got it?”

Bonner got it, all right. There'd been no more mention of the NASA administrator's job, nothing but implicit criticism. Now he was going to get help from some kind of outside contractor!
This is all Medaris's fault. Every bit of it!
The bastard always seemed to beat him.

The phone rang again. When he answered, a gruff voice responded. “I'm Carl Puckett, Dr. Bonner. I'll be at your office in an hour. You get me on the center?”

Bonner thought about keeping the man off-site. He could do it, at least for a while. Then, suddenly, he felt completely drained, defeated. It was all over, he realized that now. His career was gone, NASA was in the toilet permanently. “Stop at the gate, get a pass, Mr. Puckett. Your name will be on the approved list.”

“Thanks,” the man said, and hung up without another word.

Bonner shook his head and then went to his wall of awards and trophies. There was a small framed photograph, almost lost among them: Kate and Bonner together. She was looking at him, smiling. He was grinning, on top of the world. He suddenly felt ashamed. He had lost Kate's love and, over the years, he had lost or forgotten her dreams as well. He took the photograph off the wall and placed it facedown on his desk. Displaying it now seemed a betrayal of all that was, or could have been.

THE HORSE THAT CAN'T BE RODE

SMC

Sam was at his console at the SMC. Lakey and the astronauts had left and Bonner hadn't sent anybody to chase him out, so he decided to stay where he was. All was quiet, his controllers sitting in an exhausted trance in front of their consoles. Four hours into his twelve-hour shift he sat half-dozing in his chair, until the EECOM roused him from his stupor. “Sam, they're doing something. Just got a spike here.”

Sam blinked awake. “What's happening?” He yawned.

“I'm not certain. It was just a spike. All the systems numbers came up. I think it was
Columbia.
”

“I can confirm that, EECOM,” a voice in their headsets intoned. It was one of the faceless technicians in the back room who kept watch on shuttle subsystems around the clock. “It wasn't
Endeavour.
She's in LOS. Had to be
Columbia.
”

The EECOM shrugged. “Just a blip, I guess.”

“Naw, that ain't it,” the voice said, revealing all of its Texas flatland twang. “I think they came up just long enough to plug in a GSC.”