Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (28 page)

"Hey, Crash, I found something. Take a look at this…" Anders pulled out a folder from where it had wedged behind a drawer, disclosing an Earth map with a superimposed ground track. The paper was yellowed, crinkled, and brittle.

"Hel-lo," Crash remarked with surprise, after a moment. "That's different."

"What is?"

"That ground track couldn't have been launched from Florida," Crash explained.

"Why not?"

"It's almost polar. Inclination's way too high." The former flight director studied the chart with a practiced eye. "Looks like the kind of orbits we'd planned for the second space port."

"The one that never got built?" Anders verified.

"That's the one."

"Lessee, that was supposed to be…" Anders mulled, trying to drag the memory to the fore.

"Edwards, or near vicinity," Crash filled in.

"Oh, yeah." Anders paused, remembering. "You know… they were going to build one in the Outback or some such, too… now where was that supposed to be… uhh, oh yeah, it was gonna be in the Top End. They wanted to be able to achieve both polar and standard orbits from it. Wonder what ever became of that project…"

"Hm." Crash continued to stare down at the ground track, studying it in detail.

"‘Hm' what?"

"Edwards is something like two hundred miles southwest of here," Crash pondered. "At least, I think it is…"

"Aw, shit," Anders exclaimed, seeing his point. "They must've been launching something outta the same vicinity."

"Or planning to," Crash agreed. "Let's see what else we can dig up. Hang on to that."

After a few more moments, Anders pulled an old accordion document folder from behind another drawer. "Empty. Here. Something we can stash our clues in. When we're done collecting, it can go into your pack, along with the food."

Into the folder went the ground track, a headset, and the page Crash had torn from the phonebook. "What's that?" Anders wondered, spotting Crash's phonebook page as the former flight controller continued to rummage in drawers.

"Proof that someone was here." Crash's reply was cryptic.

"Ooo-kay…" The astronomer accepted the statement as delivered, and dived back into the drawers, fishing around. "Wait a minute. What's this?" Anders pulled out an old, cracked coffee mug. It read, "Greenbriar Hotel."

"Aw, dammit. So D.C. had full knowledge, huh?" Crash slammed his hand against a cabinet in frustrated outrage.

"How you figure?" Anders asked, mystified by Crash's strong response. "Oh, hold it, I remember. That's where the big bomb shelter for your govvies was built, wasn't it? Under the hotel?"

"Yeah."

"So this facility was top level."

"Looks that way." Crash paused. "Explains the top level cover-up on this job, too. I wonder if Jim knows. I hope to hell not. I'd hate to think he did…"

"Jim? Who's Jim?"

"President Munroe," Crash answered. "He and I served together."

"Oh. Yeah. We've got our work cut out for us, I'd say."

"I owe you an apology," Crash repented, turning and meeting his friend's eyes. "You were right."

"‘Bout…?" Mike wondered, surprised.

"The government's involvement."

"Eh. Stands to reason," Anders shrugged, waving off the apology. "They've got a vested interest in keeping it hush-hush. If we really are on the brink of a space war, there'd be panic and rioting in the streets."

"Yeah." Crash opened another drawer. "Empty. That's the last of it." He crammed the packet of clues into his backpack.

Anders stepped back, and gazed at the wall in the dim light. "Maybe not. Look at the wall."

Crash looked. "It's a wall. So?"

"It's a wall with a very big, rectangular dark patch on it," Anders pointed out, using his index finger to describe the outline, "like something big hung there for a long time…"

"And the wall faded around it," Crash caught on, staring at the dim expanse of painted sheet rock in question. "You don't s'pose…?"

The two men moved to the wall behind the cabinets. "Yep," Anders said in satisfaction, pressing his face against the wall and peering behind the cabinets, "looks like a bulletin board."

"Musta slipped behind ‘em during the move, and nobody realized it," Crash added. "Now--how do we fish it out?"

"Gimme a boost," Anders suggested, "and I'll see if I can reach it from the top side."

With several grunts and significant effort, Anders scrambled on top of the tall file cabinets, Crash assisting. He knelt on top, leaned his head against the wall, and stared downward in consideration. "Mm, yeah, I think I can get hold of it."

Anders mashed his cheek against the wall and slipped his hands down, behind the row of cabinets, until he could feel the top of the board's frame. "Okay. There it is."

"Can you get a grip on it?"

"I'm gonna give it a burl, at least. Here goes." Anders clamped the edge of the frame between his long, surprisingly strong fingers, and began easing the board upward. "Damn, this thing is heavy." All at once his grip gave way, and the bulletin board crashed back down with a racket. "Shit!" He sucked his sore fingertips for a moment.

Crash, watching from the end of the row of cabinets, waved him off. "Hold up, Mike, I've got an idea."

Murphy walked over to one of the broken chairs and picked it up, holding it by one leg. "Watch out." Crash raised the chair over his head and, averting his face, slammed it onto the concrete floor. The dry wood came apart at the joints, leaving Crash holding a good-sized stick that had been the chair leg. He nodded, satisfied. "That'll do."

"What's that for?" Anders asked from his perch.

"Something to push with. If we can push that thing a foot or so out the other end, I can help you lift it."

"Aha." Anders grinned, mischievous. "Is that some of that famous NASA problem solving at work?"

"Damn straight," Crash grinned back. "Okay, you just lift it off the ground, then let me push…"

"Got it." Anders twisted his neck, pressing his cheek flat against the wall again, as he reached as far down as he could, getting the firmest grip on the frame of the bulletin board as he could manage. He lifted it a few inches, then held it in position. "Urf… uh … howzzat?"

"Good… uhn…" Crash flattened himself against the wall, shoving the chair leg and most of his left arm behind the row of filing cabinets. "Okay… I got it… here we go…"

Working together, within a few moments the two men had the board positioned where Crash wanted it, extending some two feet past the right hand side of the cabinets; seconds later, it rested on the top of the cabinets, leaning against the wall. Anders leaped down, and they studied the contents of the bulletin board.

It was a world map; faded, at least a decade or more old, with a few coffee stains, and myriad pinholes. One large red pushpin still rested in the area designated, "Nevada Test Site." Other, smaller yellow pushpins stood in other places. Crash enumerated them silently: Colorado Springs, Colorado; Hanford, Washington; White Sands, New Mexico; Washington, D.C.; several locations in the Dakotas.
Defense sites,
he thought;
that fits. Colorado Springs, that's Cheyenne
Mountain and Schriever Air Force Base.
Then his eye was drawn to the pins located outside the U.S.: La Palma, off the northwest coast of Africa; Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean; Wenlock, on the Cape York Peninsula of Australia; Nordvik, in northern Siberia, and still more Crash didn't recognize.
Okay; corresponding sites, or potential sites, in other countries. There's that Aussie site Mike was talking about. Wow. This is huge.

"Damn," Anders remarked, making similar observations, "this whole thing is bigger than we thought."

"Looks like it," Crash had to agree. "I figure it's our sites, and then ‘their' sites."

"But, Crash," Anders noted, "some of these are allies. Australia sure isn't ‘the enemy.'"

"True." Crash pondered the map.

"What if… Crash, what if you were right and this really is the UN running the cover up?" Anders wondered.

"Well, I can see it," Crash admitted, still studying the map. "After all, it wouldn't be just the U.S. that'd be in danger from an extraterrestrial invasion."

Then Crash saw one more pushpin--one that didn't seem to correlate. He raised a thoughtful eyebrow.

"Death Valley…?" he murmured, mystified.

Chapter 17

"Wait a minute," Anders protested, as Crash searched every square inch of wall and floor with painstaking effort. "Where the hell did you get that idea?"

"Okay, look," Crash paused to explain. "There was a facility here, right?"

"We're standing in it, so I would assume so," Anders said, voice dry.

"It was the headquarters, judging by the red pushpin."

"Fair enough," Anders agreed.

"They aren't here now."

"No."

"Therefore, they went somewhere."

"Or maybe they just disbanded the program," Anders argued.

"With interstellar war on the way?" Crash posed skeptically. "Take another look at that ground track we found."

"Okay." Anders pulled the track from the folder and studied it.

"Look familiar? Think about the orbit your computer cranked out only a couple of days ago."

"Shit," Anders breathed, suddenly understanding. "Same ground track."

"Yeah. So I repeat, they went somewhere."

"All right. Go on."

"Based on that, and that," Crash indicated the ground track, then the bulletin board, "and what I know of insertion dynamics, I'm guessing they have GOT to have another base like this one in the middle of Death Valley, or damn close to it."

Anders listened, thinking. Something was nagging at the back of his mind as Crash spoke, something Anders had read recently that dovetailed into Crash's words. Suddenly a blinding light went off. "Oh, shit!"

"‘Oh, shit,' what?" Murphy wondered, staring at his friend, startled by his sudden vehemence.

"Remember the limerick in the bathroom?" Mike reminded. "The one from the topside, bean counter building?"

"Ooo, hell yeah," Crash remembered. "How'd that go again?"

Anders quoted, his voice low.

There once was a bird from the Lake,

Who hated all lizards and snakes.

To the Valley she'd move,

To get in the groove,

And left behind nothing but fakes.

"You don't suppose…" Anders wondered.

"Sure as hell sounds like it to me," Murphy noted. "They moved all the birds and the fly boys to Death Valley, and left behind nothing but fakes--decoys."

"But what the heck is the reference to lizards and snakes?" Anders wondered.

"No idea whatsoever," Crash shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe the guy just needed something to rhyme."

Anders pondered a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. So we have this to do all over again. Seems to me like we ought to figure out how to get out of here, and in there."

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do!" Crash exclaimed, exasperated. "Listen to what I'm saying, Mike. They moved."

"I know--I already agreed with you, remember?" Anders, irritated, matched Crash's tone.

"And you got all these UFO watchers on the mountain tops out there, watching." Crash gestured at the distant, unseen landscape.

"Yeah."

"So, did anybody see ‘em move?"

Anders looked blank. "No."

"Or they wouldn't still be watching," Crash pointed out. "So the Janet flights weren't the way they moved. There haven't been any other flights; that'd be a giveaway, too. So would a truck convoy."

Anders considered. "So that means they went…"

"Underground!" Crash cried in triumph. "So--"

"There has to be a tunnel here, somewhere!" Anders finished. "A freakin' big one, too."

"Yep."

"So what are we waiting for? Let's look!"

Crash stared in dumbfounded, annoyed amazement at the scientist, who was now searching walls and floor, as eager as a schoolboy.

* * * *

"Damn," Anders murmured in dejection, hours later. "Gotta be something we're missing."

Crash paused with a frustrated sigh. "Or maybe you were right, and they just shut the place down."

"No, Crash, your logic's too good. There's something right in front of our noses, and we just aren't seeing it. Stop and think."

"All right. ‘Bout what?"

"If you were moving this facility," Anders pondered aloud, "how would you do it?"

"Underground, like I said," Crash answered with a shrug.

"Yes, but how? What would you need?" Mike pressed.

"Uhhhhh…" Crash thought for long moments. "Forklifts would be nice…"

"Corridors are certainly big enough," Anders agreed. "And the crates and stuff we saw upstairs would sure be…" his voice tapered off as he glanced at Crash.

"Impossible to move otherwise," Crash finished, eyebrows climbing.

"But… the stairs," Anders protested. "There has to be an elevator for that."

A grin spread slowly across Crash's face as the light dawned. "I think you just figured out what's right under our noses, pal."

"Huh?"

"The big doors. On every floor. In the same place on each floor, now that I think about it. Welded shut… for safety?… after they cleared each floor." Crash paced in excitement.

"Ooo. That's bad," Anders remarked with a frown.

"Why?"

"If all the doors are welded shut, we're up shit creek," Anders elaborated. "We've got nothing to break the welds with."

"Lemme think…" Crash was already on the move, and Anders hurried after him. "Left turn here." They cut down a side hall. "Maybe we won't have to, Mike," he answered his friend's last comment. "If the doors were really sealed to prevent somebody falling down the shaft by accident, then--"

"The bottom one will be open?" Anders finished for him.

"Hope so. Hang a right."

"Damn, you're good," Anders remarked, impressed with his friend, as the huge doors became visible at the end of the long, dim corridor.

Crash grinned with just a hint of smugness. "No big deal. They used to call me a carrier pigeon in the service, though, I gotta admit."

Anders laughed aloud. Crash hushed him.

"What?"

"We dunno what's on the other side." Crash gestured ahead.

"Aw, get real. You were loud as hell earlier, now you wanna be quiet. Besides, we don't even know if the damn things are open," Anders grumbled.

"Look again, Mike." Crash pointed.

There was a six inch wide gap between the two giant doors.

"We're in," Crash whispered with satisfaction.

* * * *

The room was huge, more of a cavern than a room, really, with native stone walls carved in situ out of the bedrock. A full quarter of the floor consisted of a hydraulic lift platform--the elevator for which they had been searching. Several football fields would have fit within the structure, and broken and abandoned heavy lift equipment lay scattered like the toys of a giant child. On the far side of the room, a large tunnel opened into darkness. Off to one side was a stone cairn, a white cross raised at one end. No signs of life were apparent. Anders pointed at the cross. The two men made their way to stand before the cairn, reverent.

"There's an inscription," Crash observed in a murmur.

Cpt. T. Ross "High Flight" Martin

Lost in the line of duty

Rest in peace, little brother

The ones you saved from falling will remember

"Looks like maybe they didn't start welding off the doors soon enough," Anders whispered.

"Yeah."

The two surveyed the room, wandering from item to item. "I guess you were right, Crash," Anders said. "Bunch of busted forklifts and stuff. Must have taken the lot of it out through that tunnel."

"Looks like it. Let's go see."

"Hm," Anders said as they approached the dark maw. "Rails. And a third rail, to boot."

"Makes sense," Crash admitted. "Load up a small subway train and truck it to the new site. Gotta be a ways off, if it's under Death Valley. Which means we have a hike." He sighed. "Let's get going."

"Hold the phone. I'm not walking a couple hundred miles," Anders protested, "and it won't do your friends any good if it takes us that long to get there. It's already been days and days."

"So?" Crash shrugged. "What choice have we got?"

"Let's see if some of this junk works. If any of it works, maybe we can gin up something to carry us."

"Aw, you gotta be kidding, Mike," Crash complained.

"Nope." Anders walked over to the nearest forklift, Crash on his heels, and surveyed it. "Huh. Petrol-powered."

"Okay. So?"

"So no petrol. No go."

Crash frowned and wandered back to the tunnel mouth.

After awhile, a dejected Anders joined him.

"Well?" Crash demanded.

"Let's start walking," Anders sighed.

* * * *

"It's dark in here," Anders whispered into the blackness.

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Crash remarked dryly.

"Smart ass."

"Could be worse," Crash pointed out. "At least there are lights."

"Yeah--a quarter of a mile apart," Anders grumbled. "Which means we have to piss in the pitch dark to have privacy. And that means the third rail is probably still live, too. THAT'S so thrilling. I never know when I'm going to get that wonderful ‘pissing on an electric fence' sensation. And this lends a whole new meaning to taking a crap on the Underground."

"Yeah," Crash agreed. "I'm guessing the rail is how they get power to the emergency lighting in Area 51."

"But why would they need emergency lighting in Area 51?" Mike wondered. "There's nobody there."

Murphy shrugged. "Military regs, probably. Some rule someplace says they gotta have ‘em, so they have ‘em. Doesn't have to make sense."

"Okay, but that means we gotta try not to stumble over the damn thing in the dark."

"You're gettin' old, Mike," Crash teased. "Complainin' about everything."

"Dammit, Crash!" Anders burst out, his internal reservations proving too much to hold inside. "It wasn't like I was prepared to hike several hundred miles. In the dark. On rationed food and water, at that. We've been at this for a day and a half already."

"Aw, Mike," Crash offered, trying to comfort his friend, "you're doing great. You're in good shape, and you're doing fine. What's wrong, Mike? What brought this on?"

Anders sighed with resignation. "I'm beginning to realize I'm a liability, I guess."

"No, you're not," Murphy protested. "You're anything but. A--you helped me put the pieces together, and supplied a couple of the big pieces, to boot. B--you helped me get here. C--hell, I probably wouldn't still be alive without your help."

Anders shook his head. "Yeah, but--"

"It's all right, Mike," Crash soothed. "We'll make it."

"Well--ooph."

"What?" Crash stopped dead in alarm, staring at the dark. "Mike?"

"Ooo…" The sound was a groan.

"Mike?!"

"Hang… hang on… a minute," Anders panted, in obvious pain. "Damn. That was hard, whatever the hell it was."

"Run into something?"

"‘Whatever gave you that idea?'" Anders mimicked. "Yeah. Don't know what, though. But my right shin and hip are not happy about it. I'm gonna have some lovely marks tomorrow."

Crash heard a brushing sound, and realized Anders was gingerly feeling the object, attempting to determine what it was.

"Hallelujah!" Anders cried.

"What?!"

"I think… Crash, come here… go slow…"

"Keep talking." Murphy put out his hands, groping toward Anders' voice in the blackness.

"Right here… Crash, I think it's one of those railway hand cars…" Anders heard a sort of mushy thud.

"Umph… found it." Crash explored the cold metal with his hands. "Uhh… I think you're right."

Together they examined the object, mostly by feel: The nearest tunnel light was over five hundred feet away.

"Well, looks like Somebody Upstairs heard you, Mike."

"I'll take it," Anders exulted.

"Hold on, star man, pumping one of these things isn't easy, either," Crash pointed out.

"No, but once we get it going, we can take turns."

"True," Crash grinned. "Okay, climb up."

They scrambled up, and with much effort, grunts, and groans, got the lever moving. The car lurched.

"Whoa--wrong way," Crash observed.

"Woop, shift gears," Anders answered.

"How?"

"Um… we got a problem."

"Meaning?"

"How DO we shift gears?"

"Hmmm…" Crash pondered, dredging through his memories. "In the old Westerns, there was a lever on the side…"