IGMS Issue 50 (7 page)

Time mends a broken heart
.

And he intended to keep the rocket ship.

It was closing in on midnight when Dr. Debra Galton's cell phone rang. The device quietly buzzed, rattling on the surface of the side table near her bed. She groped sleepily with her hand, the tips of her fingers almost knocking the phone to the floor. She snatched the phone up and pulled it to her face, mumbling, "Hello?"

"Doctor Galton?" asked a somewhat cheerful male voice on the other end.

"Yes," she said, trying to stifle a yawn.

"I'm dreadfully sorry to have disturbed you this late, but since you're on the east coast, and working to California time--"

"I've been in New York for three weeks now. I'm adjusted. Who are you and what can I do for you?"

"Doctor," the man's voice said, his tone turning more serious, "one of my employees was kind enough to fish a little spaceship out of the fountain that's in front of the Unified Production Group building."

Debra had felt another yawn building, but she stopped short.

"That would be my little spaceship," she admitted. "I hope nobody's going to charge me with littering."

"Curious place to leave an even more curious calling card," the man said.

"When you've been turned down by the top dozen best aerospace firms in the country, your decorum tends to fray around the edges. I was upset. My little model didn't seem to be of much use to me anymore. I threw it into the water."

"Run out of pennies to wish with?" the voice said, followed by a low chuckle.

"Something like that," she replied. "Look, I really am exhausted. So if there's a fine to be paid--"

"Don't be silly, Doctor, I'm not from the city. Nor am I from UPG. Please, tell me you haven't thrown out the rest of your presentation materials."

"No," she said, growing both curious and irritated. "Look, I'd really like to know what's so important that you woke me up for it?"

"Good," the voice said. "I called, because you need to have yourself and your materials ready to give me a good show at nine in the morning tomorrow. That's nine
sharp.
In the executive conference room. I'm very busy. Don't make me wait."

Debra sat straight up in bed.

"Which conference room, and where?" she asked.

"Your hotel," said the voice. "Excelsior suite. Have your stuff set up and ready to roll when I arrive."

"Who
is
this?" Debra asked.

"You'll find out tomorrow," said the man. "Don't let me down!"

Debra halfway wanted to tell the stranger to stick it where the sun wouldn't shine, but he'd dropped the line on his end before she could get another word out. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and flipped on her hotel room's side table lamp. Was the caller just pulling a stupid prank? Anybody could have gotten her cell phone number off the spaceship model, assuming they were clever and knew where to look.

Debra rubbed her eyes with her fists, then padded across the carpet to the bathroom, where she splashed some water on her face and patted her forehead and cheeks with a towel. Looking into the mirror, Debra could still see traces of the hopeful, enthusiastic person who had gotten off the plane at JFK International in late April. Now it was the middle of May, and she was almost out of money. She was set to fly home tomorrow. An afternoon flight. No sense cancelling her itinerary, if whoever it was that apparently wanted to see her proposal wound up having the same reaction as all the others who had seen it.

That the person on the phone had been circumspect about his identity bugged Debra deeply. She was in no mood for guessing games.

Yet . . . what could it hurt? After a dozen failures, what was one more?

She went to the hotel room's desk, booted her laptop, and spent an hour going back through her video files and graphics, doing a small under-the-breath rehearsal before retreating again to her bed.

The rest of that night's sleep was fitful, the taste of serial disappointment still fresh on Debra's tongue.

The Excelsior suite was already lit when Debra arrived. A small breakfast cart with the hotel's best--bagels, croissants, sugary pastries, bowls of fruit, a piping hot carafe of coffee, a pitcher of milk, and other goodies--was being wheeled in when she passed through the double doors. Unlike some of the other conference rooms Debra had seen, this one was small. Intimate. A short, oval-shaped table filled the center of the space, with three high-backed chairs to a side, and one at each end. The big screen had already been drawn down, and the overhead projector was humming quietly, showing a bright blue box on the screen's silvery surface.

"He'll be glad you were early," remarked a hotel staffer who strolled past Debra as she looked around the suite, her briefcase in one hand and her laptop in the other.

Just three of the eight chairs had places set in front of them: tiny lamps erected from the conference table's surface, silver-bodied ball-point pens, three yellow legal pads, and the requisite outlets for various personal electronics.

"May I ask who
he
is?" Debra said.

"You may ask," the hotel woman responded with a smirk, then proceeded out of the suite and let the double doors close shut behind her.

Fifteen minutes.

Debra shook her head slightly and went to the end of the table closest to the screen. She sat down, plugged her laptop into the overhead line for the projector, and got her charger set up. She cycled through her files until she found the nested set of videos and graphs, all woven together in what she had thought--three months ago--would be an irresistible sales pitch.

Debra paused momentarily, closing her eyes and swallowing hard.

It had been stupid, to spend so much money to come all the way across the country for the sake of a dream. In the end, nobody had cared what her credentials were. Stanford or no Stanford. If the fish weren't biting, the fish weren't biting. Almost nobody seemed interested in space exploration anymore, except for the few, lonely souls trying to get additional space probes pushed through the European Space Agency, across the Atlantic. And NASA? Gone. Slashed to nothingness by yet another administration more interested in buying votes than fulfilling dreams.

Debra kept her eyes closed for a few more moments, then opened them, located the little audio-video clicker in a plastic pocket under the table, tested the clicker--to make sure it interfaced properly with both her laptop and the projector hanging from the ceiling--and stood up. Now, instead of a blue box on the screen, there was a professionally-rendered computer graphics version of the little model spaceship she'd thrown into the fountain yesterday afternoon. In the distance, behind the ship, a stylized version of the planet Jupiter slowly rotated, its cloud patterns and weather formations replicated with precise detail.

In her head, Debra once again rehearsed her routine.

Suddenly, the double doors popped open. Three people strode in. Two men, and one woman. Older people. With eyes peering over the tops of their spectacles.

"Excellent" said the oldest man, who strode immediately up to Debra and extended his hand.

She took it, and he shook: not hard, but firm.

"Ben Groomer," said the man. "Nice to see you took me seriously."

Debra blinked.

"Ben . . .
Groomer?
The television magnate?"

"None other," he said, smiling. His capped teeth gleamed by the light of the projected image on the screen.

One of Groomer's associates handed him something.

"Mind if I keep it?" he said.

Debra looked down at her little spaceship model.

"Heck of a nifty trick," he said, pressing a tiny button on the ship's hull that shot a soft laser out the ship's nose and onto the wall, where the blue light resolved into Debra's full list of contact details, plus web site address, and in larger, impressive letters, the words, JUPITER OR BUST.

"It was a gimmick one of my students thought up," she said. "Nobody at any of the other companies even noticed it."

"Shame," he said. "But then, they weren't ad men, I take it. I love a good attention-getter. And this, Doctor, was an attention-getter."

"How did one of
your
employees get his hands on it anyway? Do your people lurk around the porticos of major buildings in New York, waiting for something interesting to come their way?"

"As a matter of fact," Groomer said, winking, "yes they do. And you never answered my question."

Debra looked down, then stuttered, "Y-yes, of course. I won't be taking it back to California with me. I'd much rather somebody have it, than nobody. Especially if that somebody can appreciate it."

"Thank you," he said. "Now, it's almost nine. Can we get started?"

"Sure," Debra said.

She went to her computer and picked up the clicker. Groomer sat down in his seat, where one of his associates had already laid out a small array of items from the breakfast cart. He sipped at his coffee, then began preparing a bagel. Debra cleared her throat, and recited her spiel.

Groomer and his two associates had been silent through Debra's entire fifteen minute routine. Now that she was near the end, Groomer raised a hand to halt her.

"I've only got one real question," he said. "If everything can work like you say it can, why not just go to Mars?"

"Well, Mr. Groomer, to be blunt, spending money to go to Mars--just because it's closer--is a lot like spending money to drive from New York City to Burbank, when you could fly to New Zealand for not much more."

His eyebrows went up, and he nodded.

Encouraged, Debra pressed on.

"As you can see here," she said, using the clicker to freeze the animation of the spacecraft at a particularly salient data point, "once the equipment and people are out of Earth's orbit, all else becomes a waiting game. And while Mars takes less time to reach, Jupiter has an abundance of the one resource we'd need--more than any other--to make our presence permanent."