Ice Cream and Venom (7 page)

The fire broke out about two hours later, in the kitchen. Grapeape was in there when it happened, apparently trying to cook something in the toaster oven, but it got away from him because of his now-useless left arm. It threatened to spread through the whole ship, but Steve just shot off the engines. In weightlessness, without any up and down, the heated air couldn't lift the carbon dioxide away from the flames, so it just built up around the kitchen until it suffocated the combustion. The avocado green countertops were ruined, but there was no substantial damage beyond that. They decided to keep Grapeape away from anything electrical from then on. He mostly just stayed in the lounge, reading a now-singed Tom Swift, Jr. novel that Steve had brought along.

In the cockpit, Steve explained how the landing system worked: "The whole thing is run by this TRS-80 microcomputer here," he said, "Liftoff is easy, even Grapeape could handle that, but landing is pretty dangerous, harder than flying a 'copter and that's pretty hard. I could never get the hang of it."

"How does it work?"

"Simple, just type in the X and Y coordinates you want to land at, and it'll take you there."

"That's all?"

"Yeah, easy. It's a simple trig function."

They decided to land at the Apollo 11 landing site, mainly because it was the easiest one to find, smack in the center of the moon's nearside hemisphere. It was equatorial, roughly evenly spaced from the moon's eastern and western edges, as seen from earth. A simple matter, really, with no ceremony. Steve simply typed in the coordinates, and down they went.

Steve was leering at her in the airlock deck as they suited up. Lee was trying hard to avoid meeting her eyes. He was embarrassed, and still in pain from their tryst.

"My suit doesn't fit very well," she said, struggling to get into it.

"Nobody's suits fit very well," Lee said.

"Why is that?" she asked.

"Because we stole them, my lovely," Steve said.

"What?"

"Space suits are tailor made, custom built, high tech, and expensive, like a million or more dollars a pop," Lee explained without looking at her. We just figured out which astronauts were slightly bigger than us, and then stole their suits from a museum. Yours probably fits worse than ours because you're kind of a late addition to the team."

"And I'm a girl," she added.

"Yes." He said.

"Oh, you noticed that, did ya, Lee?" Steve joked.

They couldn't find the Apollo 11 landing site.

They climbed hills, they shuffled around, they used the top of the Internal Bleeder as a lookout spot, but they couldn't find it. Lee eventually theorized that it was because the Eagle's initial landing site turned out to be unsuitable on final approach, they had drifted downrange several miles, landing with only a hatful of fuel left. Since they landed off course, and because Armstrong and Aldrin didn't venture far from the landing site—only a hundred feet or so—they decided it might simply be too small a needle to find in this particular haystack.

They decided to just move on to the Apollo 12 site the next day. When they got back to the ship, the door wouldn't open. Susan kind of freaked out, and Steve had to ultimately break the lock with a bayonet he'd been carrying for some eccentric reason. When they got in, they found that Grapeape had somehow managed to futz the locking mechanism. Steve set about to fix it, while Lee gave Susan the Betamax and had her film him planting the Nebraska state flag in the lunar soil.

She slept in his cabin that night, Lee slept on the floor in the lounge because Grapeape was already hogging the couch. In the low gravity, however, the floor was surprisingly comfortable.

He awoke to find Grapeape staring at him.

"There are two kinds of history-changing moments, Mister Austin," he said rather absently.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Those that everyone talks about, and those that change the future of the world, but no one notices."

"I'm going to make some eggs. You want some eggs?"

"Which one is this, Mister Austin? Which one are we?"

They couldn't find the Apollo 12 landing site. Nor the sites for 14, 15, 16, or 17. The inability to find the final landing site was particularly damning: they'd gone
miles
away from the lander in the rover, there should have been tracks all over the place, but there couldn't see anything. There was nothing to be seen.

Susan said, "Well, now we know why Nixon killed the space program and why Carter is so loony about keeping it dead: nobody's ever been on the moon before us!"

That night, aboard the internal bleeder, Steve found clear evidence of sabotage. Someone had taken a fire axe to the engine. The damage was insubstantial, but the conclusion was unavoidable: Someone in their midst was a traitor. They met in the lounge deck to discuss it among the four of them.

"I'm just going to come right out and say it. I think it's you, Grapeape," Steve said.

"What? No! Why?" the fat kid spluttered.

"Everything that's gone wrong since we left earth was your fault—the fire, dumping fuel, dumping cargo which prevented us from contacting Earth directly..." Steve accused.

"I'm clumsy! Those were just accidents!" Grapeape began to sweat nervously.

"Added to which, none of us ever met you before, and suddenly an army of Feds show up..." Lee said.

"What? You think I'm a federal agent? I'm just nineteen! What kind of FBI guy could I be if I'm just that old?"

"He's got a point," Susan said.

"He could just look young. Feds'll do that sometimes." Steve said.

"I've got a driver's license!" Grapeape said.

"It could be faked. Easiest thing in the world for a Fed." Steve answered.

"And I could swear I saw you give some kind of hand-sign to the feds back at the farm. I didn't think anything of it before, but now..." Lee said.

"What? No! I've got a nervous thing going on, I get too scared, I get twitchy..." the missionary protested.

"Honestly, guys," Susan said, "I think we're jumping at shadows here. Dumping the fuel was clearly my fault. I pushed him on the controls by accident, and honestly, none of you met me before we left. Hell, I could be a spy, if there was one. I think he's just a fat, clumsy kid."

"He's a spy," Steve insisted.

"It's looking that way," Lee agreed.

"They shot Tom! They killed my missionary partner, why would they do that if we were spies?"

"Maybe he wasn't a spy, and didn't know who you were," Steve said, "Maybe he wasn't actually dead, they just faked it for some reason. We didn't have time to examine the body."

Grapeape looked pleadingly at Lee, "I saved your life! I got shot for you! I can't use my arm because I saved your stupid life!"

"Again, he's got a point," Susan said, "I don't think he hacked up the engine. Maybe the axe just broke loose and clattered around in there while we were flying. You might as well accuse me of doing it."

"I am not a spy! I'm not trying to sabotage anything. Why would I? That'd kill me too! I don't know how to fly this thing!" Grapeape got up, and huffed around the cabin in impotent, crippled frustration. He stepped too hard, and kept bouncing up and banging his head on the ceiling. He gave up and sat crossed legged, his head in his good hand.

"Please don't kill me," he said.

"Ok, here's what we're gonna do," Lee said, "Obviously, kid, there's a spy onboard who's fanatical enough to do himself in if it'll stop us, and obviously it's got to be the Feds, since they knew we'd end up blowing their dirty little secret. You're really the only candidate, so I'm going to lock you in the airlock with food and water and blankets and some issues of People Magazine. You'll be perfectly safe, no one's killing anyone, and then we'll turn you over to the authorities when we get back."

"He
is
one of the authorities," Susan said.

"I said we're going back," Lee said. "But we're not going home. The Feds'll kill us the minute we land. I don't see as we have any choice. We're going to have to go to the Soviets."

"No, please!" Grapeape pleaded.

They spent the night on the moon. After Steve was asleep, Susan came up to the lounge deck naked, and enticed Lee back down to his room.

"I want to give this another shot," she said.

Whereas physics had worked against them in zero gravity, one sixth gravity was their friend. Everything was amazing, magical, wonderful, nirvanic. They made love until they quite literally couldn't anymore. They kept trying, of course, but their bodies sore, their lips raw, bathed in sweat, bleary-eyed, they were simply done, beyond the limits of their endurance. As they drifted off to achy sleep, Susan said, "Austin's a pretty good last name for an anchorwoman. You want to get married?"

"Sure," Lee said.

The next morning, the airlock was empty, the outer door open. There was a semi-illegible note scrawled on the wall in magic marker that said, "I cannot allow myself to be captured by the Soviets."

"Well, one less problem to deal with," Steve said.

"I can't believe I was wrong about him," Susan said.

"Yeah, it's pretty much cut and dried, isn't it?" Lee said.

"Good ending for the story, isn't it?" Susan suggested, "Bad guy overcome, defeated, intrepid explorers survive to fight another day. Happily ever after."

"Happily ever after," Lee agreed.

The flight back to earth had gone without incident, and then, Steve said, "Damn! We're landing!"

"What? Why?" Lee said, scrambling up to the cockpit.

"We were in orbit, I put the disk in the TRS-80 to plot a rendezvous course for Salyut 6, but then the landing computer kicked in! We're heading down!"

"Can you stop it?" Susan asked.

"No, once it's on, it can't be overridden until we land, then you can reset it," Lee explained,

"How could this have happened?" Susan said.

"I don't know," Steve said, obviously frightened, "Landing is a different disk than the one I was using. I'd have to physically take out the one floppy and put in another one to get it to do this."

"Could this be some of Grapeape's lingering sabotage?" Susan asked? Like maybe changing the labels on the disk?"

"No, Steve said," I'd loaded up the Rendezvous program, which is on one disk, and when I hit 'enter', there was a different one in there that started to run. Someone would have had to sneak in and change it
while
I was working."

"Grapeape," Lee said, "We never saw the body, we didn't even look for it. Maybe he crawled into an air vent or a locker or something, let himself out after we left."

"Are we going to crash?" Susan asked, frightened.

"No, no, it's safe as your mom's lap," Steve said, "It's fully automated. We're landing in Alaska somewhere. That's pretty remote, the Feds may not be able to get to us in time. So we touch down, I reset the computer, we lift off and head for the space station. Lee, you've got to find Grapeape! There's no telling how much trouble he could cause! Check the engine room."

"Just to confirm," Susan said, "So landing is entirely safe, and really we don't need you to land at all at this point, right?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

Susan pulled a gun out of her purse and shot him squarely in the back of the head. Lee was halfway down the ladder when she killed his uncle. She kicked him in the face, and he tumbled down into the lower deck. She quickly slid down the handrails, and kicked him again in the face and the groin.

"I switched the disk," she said, "He was deaf as a post, never heard me sneaking up behind him."

"But... Grapeape?"

"Framed him, killed him, chucked him out the airlock."

"But..."

"Yeah, yeah, 'but, but, but, but.' Here's the short version: NORAD saw the Internal Bleeder take off back in July. We knew it took off from Nebraska. When you made your second flight in August, we were able to track it to the Mayfield area. We poured spies into the town as surreptitiously as we could—remember you said I only started working at the farm report a bit under a month ago?"

"You guys didn't know who I was. You couldn't have known I'd be watching you and ask you out," he gasped through broken teeth.

"Oh, no, I was there to investigate the station owner, actually. Just dumb luck that you called me. I had something coy in mind to say as the final thing you'll ever hear, but, meh, I'm just gonna shoot you instead. Good lay, though! Well done! Oh, and the mushrooms were nice. Remember those? "

And then she killed him.

The government helicopters arrived to find the Internal Bleeder standing in the snow. It had been down so long the ground had stopped steaming. There was a light snowfall. A man in an expensive suit got out, and strode over to the spacecraft. Susan was huddled by a campfire.

"'Bout time you showed up. I'm freezing out here," she said.

"You contained the situation, I see. The President will be very pleased."

"Yup. Score one for the good guys. Happily ever after."

Outside Dressing Room 17, the Security Chief straightened his tie and smoothed out the wrinkles in his pants as best he could. He was nervous. Summoning up some of his famous resolve, however, he reminded himself that "The King of Rock and Roll" was a man just like any other, and knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" The King asked, in his unmistakable West Texas drawl.

"Presley. Aaron Presley. From Pinkertons. I'm in charge of security here tonight," the chief said.

"Come in. Come on in," The King said. Aaron took a deep breath, and did as he was told, and handed his ID over to the man for his perusal.

The King was not an imposing figure, rather short and a little goofy looking, slightly bug-eyed and hopelessly myopic, which he attempted to hide with sunglasses, whether indoors or out. He'd had some plastic surgery to fix his jug-ears, and dressed entirely in black. Even with his oddball looks, he was already the most popular musician of the twentieth century, and not yet thirty. This was the man who, along with Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Buddy Holly, had invented Rock and Roll a decade before, and in the years since had led the mad charge to transform it in to something newer, stronger, better, stranger and more operatic and glorious and strange and unique. He was a living legend, he was a genius, he was brilliant, and if he was kind of on the ugly side, so what? '
It's supposed to be about the music,
' Aaron thought, '
Can you imagine what it would be like if the look was more important than the sound? What a travesty.
'

Aaron had been around a lot of legends, of course, but for some reason the musical ones always made his head swim. He was a naturally musical guy.

The King looked at the ID, and then handed it back to the Security Chief. "E. Aaron Presley?" He asked, "What's the 'E' for?"

"Gah. It's... well, it's an embarrassing family name. I don't use it," he answered.

"Oh, we've got that in my family, too. I'm not even going to tell you about some of the unseemly names we've got 'mongst my kin. Is that a Memphis accent I hear?"

"Sort of. I was born in Mississippi, but we moved there when I was young."

"Well thank God you're here," The King said, "You know I was always told Florida was part of the South, but there's so many Yankees around here I may as well be in Ohio or Canada. It's nice to hear a voice from home."

And just like that, Aaron was at ease again. He'd heard about The King being a class act, but he'd never realized just how smooth the man was. He had an idiot daydream of himself in circumstances like these, a life of ease and artistic talent—he'd been tolerable on guitar, and was a good singer in the church choir—but of course stupid ugly reality got in the way. Once again, he lamented his life, and wondered how he'd gotten so far without ever really feeling like he belonged. It was as if being around this man was a reminder of how off-track his own life had become. He mentally cursed at himself—now was not the time for such reveries—and spoke.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

"So how can I help you, Mr. Presley?" The King asked, while crossing the room and sitting down on the couch.

"Actually, that's what I wanted to ask you, Mr. Orbison, Sir." Aaron said.

"Roy, please."

"Sorry... Roy... Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Oh, no, Claudette and I are quite happy, aren't we, honey?"

"...Yes..." came a distracted voice from the back room.

"Well, alright sir. I just wanted you to know that everything is under tight control tonight, and we aren't expecting any problems."

"I don't reckon so," Orbison said, "but I figure the audience is giving you Pinkertons boys fits."

"Between you and me, I'd rather provide security at a riot," Aaron said.

Orbison laughed politely, surprising Aaron.

"Is the President actually here?" He asked.

"Nixon? Yes sir, Aaron replied, "In fact he requested you for the entertainment you know."

"Yep. So I heard. Actually, I doubt he's that big of a fan. I think he's just trying to look hip."

"Probably." There was an awkward moment of silence.

"Uhm..." Aaron volunteered, "I was talking to Captain Reynolds a little while ago—he asked if there was any way I could arrange a meeting with you afterwards..."

"Burt Reynolds?"

"Yes sir."

"I didn't realize he was gonna be here! Mercy! Tell him that I asked
you
if you could arrange a meeting with him!" he said excitedly. Aaron laughed, while The King went on, "I don't get to meet the first man in space every day! Man, I'd love to discuss aeronautics with him!"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I always wanted to be a pilot but... you know, with my eyes... it was music or the oil fields. Still, I love planes..."

While talking, Roy started to scribble something down on a large sheet of paper, and handed it to Aaron.

"What's this?"

"Autograph. You looked like you lost the nerve to ask for one."

"Thank you! Thank you, sir!"

Aaron left.

Aaron met Evans back at the security shack.

"Did you meet The King?" He asked.

"I did."

"What was he like?"

"Class act all around. So what have you got for me out here?"

Evans took Aaron around to the side of the guard shack, and pointed out some spatters on it that someone had hastily tried to wipe up, but done a bad job of.

"Blood?" Aaron asked.

"I'm afraid so, Boss. Given how dark it is here, and the weird lighting, it'd be easy to mistake it for mud or a grease spatter."

"I hate it when my subconscious is right." Aaron said. "Probably it was somebody trying to clean it up that made me even notice it in the first place. Just a plain ol' mess wouldn't have tripped my switch."

"There's a slightly-less-dusty patch heading off in this direction, and if we follow it along..."—they did so—"...we find an actual pool of blood behind these tires. Whoever our murderer is, they're not too strong, couldn't haul the body away all by themselves in one go."

"And look at this," Aaron said. He pointed to the unmistakable outline of a boot-print leading through the pool of blood, towards the shack. He began to feel overwhelmed.

Aaron left Evans to find more clues, and immediately reported in to Base Security. There was the typical pissing match going on between the Secret Service, the Boeing Goons, and the Pinkertons folks brought in to handle civilian affairs, so, as usual, no one was happy to see him. Curiously, he found Captain Reynolds there, chatting with Tom, the head of Boeing security. Tom looked a bit incongruous in his tuxedo around all the uniformed security types, but he was always a bit off-putting.

It was widely thought that Boeing had recruited Reynolds more for his good looks and his charm than for his flying ability. He was well over the maximum height limit for pilots, and in fact when von Braun had recruited him, he'd been flying helicopters rather than anything more exotic. Even if the rumor was true—and of course it was—no one complained much. Burt was undeniably dashing and charming and instantly likeable, and a very good face for the emerging space industry to use as their poster boy. '
Now here, looks matter,
' Aaron thought, '
Can you imagine what a public relations nightmare it would be if they'd used wiry little test pilots or bland pencil-necked scientists as spokesmen for the space program? No one would ever be interested in it. Hell, they might as well just have left the whole thing to the government if they were gonna go that route...
'

"Oh, Hiya, Aaron," Burt said.

"Captain," Aaron said amiably.

Presley explained the situation to security, but the Boeing Security Chief refused to lock down the base, citing the lack of a body. "There's thousands of people here, Presley, we can't go shutting down the base every time someone gets an unreported nosebleed."

"But Tommy..."

"But me no buts, boy, find me a body or go away."

Aaron sighed and left. Burt walked with him.

"Damn Yankees," the Captain said.

"Tell me about it," Aaron agreed, "Oh, I met The King!"

"How'd that go?"

"Before I even had a chance to ask him your question, he asked me if he could meet you, personally," Aaron lied.

"Really? Hot damn!" Burt laughed in that distinctive, high-pitched cackle he had. It was incongruous, coming out of such a heroic, burly frame.

"Yeah, he said he wants to talk about aeronautics with you!"

"Hot damn!" Burt said again, before going off to do astronaut things.

Backstage, Aaron found Ron and apprised him of the situation. As they were walking along, Aaron became distracted, then stopped abruptly, and backed up. Ron followed him, but by the time he got to where the security chief was standing, the chief had bolted forward twenty feet down the hall, then froze again, and backtracked more slowly.

"You see that?" he asked.

"See what?"

"There's an irregular pattern on the floor," Aaron said, pointing it out, a little chevron on the ground.

"It's just an imperfection in the terrazzo, maybe?"

"No, it's about every four feet or so, only on the left-hand side."

"A smudge or something?" Ron asked.

"Probably," Aaron said bending down, and scraping his nail over it. He stood back up, holding his finger out to Evans: "Blood. And dirt. Mostly dirt, but definitely blood."

"If it was a snake, it woulda bit me," Evans said. Without saying it, they both concluded it must belong to the track that went through the puddle outside, and they followed it to the commissary.

It was the normal riot of activity, with musicians and groupies and stagehands and tuxedoed orchestra types milling about. The orchestra was a total F.U.B.A.R.: An unexpected bout of spoiled chicken had laid low half the Miami Orchestra, so additional musicians had been flown in from a half dozen cities on the spur of the moment. It was a security nightmare clearing and verifying all those people, not to mention the logistics of getting them all housed and fed. And right in the middle of all this, the bloody footprint led to...

...The annoying British guy from earlier! He was sitting at a table with Roy Orbison, yammering on, "I dare you!"

"Why would I take the dare?" Roy asked politely.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. I dare you to go up on stage and play the worst song you ever wrote, I dare you! If you've got any bollocks, you'll do it."

"Ok, I will. But you have to play
your
worst song, too."

"We're the opening act! If we play our worst song, what guarantee is there that you'll still play yours?"

"Who hasn't got any balls now, my friend?" Roy asked, smiling behind his sunglasses.

"Hey, you!" Aaron shouted. Ron ran towards the Brit, who screamed a profanity, and bolted from the table. Aaron ran towards him from the other side, but the man did a little almost-dance-step managing to avoid both of them, and scooted out the door before either of them could do anything.

"Well, there goes our prime suspect," Evans said.