Kinsella (Kinsella Universe Book 1) (15 page)

Stephanie looked at John Gilly with her astonishment clear on her face.  “The Navy pilots have refused the mission?” she asked him

“Yes.  Stephanie, they weren’t getting anything but milk runs and not many of them.  Now, they won’t fly at all.”

“I’d say that’s inconceivable, but clearly I’m in the minority.”

“They have their reasons.”

“John, I can’t believe those reasons include personal concerns for their safety.”

“Not exactly.  Personal concerns, to be sure.  Stephanie, for a Navy pilot, the only thing the Space Service has going for it is the occasional chance to fly ships in space.  But your career is pretty much over, because no ex-Navy pilots have been promoted.  For that matter, even though the Navy has contributed ten percent of the pilots to the Space Service, they are only offered three percent of the missions.  The dull and boring ones.

“I do have to say the Air Force pilots don’t seem to have any trouble stepping up to the plate for the dangerous missions.  Of course, when they get back, they get promoted.”

“And the Navy pilots don’t?”

“No.”  The single word hung naked and alone in the silence that followed.

“Surely you’ve told your boss.”

“I haven’t seen him in months.  What’s to report? 
Ad Astra
continues ahead of schedule and under budget.  Testing is complete and now the final preparations for the epic maiden voyage of the ship are well underway.

“I’m the Ad Astra project liaison.  This isn’t about that at all.”

“You should have said something to me, if you didn’t say something to him, long before this.”

“The pilots have been wanting to keep it low key.  This rescue flight has blown the lid off.  The Space Service hired Malcolm to fly Rescue One and he named a Navy pilot as his second seat.  Commander Paulsen refused the mission, even when ordered.  When Paulsen was pressed, he resigned his commission.”

John met her eyes.  “I’ve known Greg Paulsen for a dozen years, Stephanie.  This wasn’t something he did lightly, or without a lot of thought.  He loved the Navy, he loved flying and his fondest dream was to fly in space.  You don’t give all that up without the best of reasons.”

“I spoke to the President three weeks ago, a couple of days after the first test.  He wanted to know how the test went.  The Space Service told him that they were still evaluating the data from the test.  I told him you could tell him all of what I was telling him, but he wanted to hear it from me.

“What he really called about was he was curious about the plans for a second ship.  I told him flat out that there are no plans for a second ship.  The Space Service’s official line is that until the first flight successfully returns they can’t even begin to make judgments about what should change.  So they’ve done nothing.  He didn’t say anything, he just grunted and asked me about the surfing.

“And the rescue?” Stephanie asked.

“You didn’t hear?  They lifted from Hickam at 3 AM this morning.  They have a day and a half left.”

He looked at her and saw she was thinking about something.  “What, Stephanie?”

“I hesitate to bring this up, even though it may be a thornier problem in the long run than rescuing adventurers in the Jovian Trojans.”

“What is it?” he said, a little impatient.

“We have some time, John, so I’m going to rehearse my explanation on you, so that I can catch the President on a really, really good day.  So bear with me.”

“Okay.” 

“Do you know how I picked Maunalua Bay to build
Ad Astra
?”

“Knowing you, it was with due diligence.”

“John, two things you have to remember.  First, that no matter how much research you do, it’s never enough.  The second thing is that I’m at my worst predicting what ordinary people will do.  Politicians and the military — they behave, mostly, as I expect.

“I was in a hurry.  I looked at a map of the US, with ocean depths marked.  Hawaii, the state, stood out.  Go south from here five miles and you come to some of the deepest ocean on the planet.  Where
Ad Astra
sits, the water is thousands of meters deep.  It made berthing it very exciting.”

“I can imagine,” he said dryly.  “Had a bit of trouble, did you?”

“More than a bit, but it was an engineering problem and had engineering solutions.

“Unintended consequences, John, that’s what the problem is.

“I found the Bay on a map, and looked at what was here.  A major highway, homes, stores... that sort of thing.  I’m from Southern California, John.  We have those running out of our ears.”

“Did you ever watch the movie
Six Days and Seven Nights
?” he asked.

“No.”

“Harrison Ford has a good line.  The girl tells him she and her fiancé came to the island they were on to find romance.  Ford is drunk and he laughs and says, ‘Lady, this is an island.  If you didn’t bring it, it ain’t here.’”

Stephanie sighed.  “So I have learned.

“It was simple, really.  I looked for commercial land availability.  There was no problem; there was more than enough available for my needs.  No problems at first.  As we grew though, we had some problem finding enough office space, so we leased some of the stores at the local mall and converted them into offices.  Everyone seemed happy.”

He chuckled.  “I have a terrible feeling about where this is going.”

“You don’t have any idea.  When we started on the hull, the company making the titanium blocks decided it would be more economical to fabricate them here.  Their titanium floated right by Hawaii on its way to Southern California, you see.

“So, they looked around and found a retailer who wasn’t making as big of a bundle of money as the hull builder was offering.  They handed the keys of the local supermarket over to them, and in a few weeks they were happily fabricating titanium pieces for the hull.

“They’d even overcome the problem about having enough electricity by offering to split the cost of a new line into the area, 90-10 with the local utility company, which was having trouble meeting the local demand anyway.

“That was in the first few weeks of the project, John.  Slowly, steadily, it’s been snowballing.  Other space-based businesses found that it would be more economical to have local offices.  They were willing to pay more than the locals, and quickly priced everyone out of the market.

“As more offices moved in, the more attractive it became for newcomers to move here.  Aside from the idiots at the Space Service, everyone believes that
Ad Astra
is the just the first of dozens, maybe hundreds of ships that will be built at Maunalua.”

“I can’t fault that logic,” John told her.  “Assuming someone gets the Space Service off its can.”

“John, the homes here are fairly expensive.  Even so, some of them have been sold to various business enterprises.  People are raising a little fuss now, but the instant the next construction contract is let, we’ll get an avalanche of newcomers, one that dwarfs what’s happened to date.”

Stephanie stuck her finger in her throat, miming gagging.  “If my father was here, he’d kill me for suggesting this.  I mean it; I would be at risk of life and limb.  It goes against everything I believe.  But John, Maunalua Bay is an ideal site for this.  Two words: eminent domain.”

He whistled.  “Even the President won’t be able to do that on his own.  It’ll take an act of Congress.  Steph, the presidential elections are in a few weeks.  He’s not going to do it, not now.  Nor will Congress.”

“I figured.  No, we’ll want to hit them up the first thing in February.  Let everyone get their oaths of office under their belts; let them get their new office drapes installed.  I was thinking, the State of the Union.  Something about how we must all sacrifice for the conquest of space — particularly the poor people here on the southeastern end of Oahu.”

She stopped and looked at him.  “How did I do?”

“Is that it?”

She nodded.

“God, I don’t know, Steph.  I have a house on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.  You wouldn’t have sold me.”

She nodded seriously.  “Don’t think I’m upset, John.  The purpose of tests and rehearsals is to correct things early on.”

Anna Sanchez poked her head into Stephanie’s office.  “Boss, the powers that be just dumped mission control for this rescue in our lap.  You want to sit in on the conference call an hour from now about what we’re going to need to do?”

“Yes, of course.  Call Howard and tell him what’s happened.  He knows what they’re going to want and we can get started on it now.”

She turned to John.  “There are times when I think the topmost priority of the Space Service is to make sure I fail at each and every thing I attempt.”

“Times?  Stephanie, it occupies their entire waking existence.”

Anna interrupted.  “Boss, they want to send a shit pot of their own people.”

Stephanie woke when nudged.  “They’re about to make the last course correction, Professor,” Anna Sanchez told her.

Stephanie looked around the control center, now fully staffed.  Even the gallery was packed.  It was a hell of thing.  The problem had always been, everyone who flew cared.  You couldn’t tell them not to come, you couldn’t tell them not to pay attention.

She knuckled the sleep out of her eyes and then walked to the communication positions at the control center.  The mission communicator saw Stephanie and bobbed her head.  “Professor, now twenty minutes to final approach.  Everything is nominal.”

“Roger that,” Stephanie told her.

John Gilly was a few feet away, intent on a discussion with one of the mission liaisons.  He looked up at Stephanie.  “It’s going good.”

She shook her head.  “It’s just not going badly.  If Pilot Officer Malcolm can get close, then everything will depend on his ability to maintain a meter separation with the surface.”

“Roger that, Professor,” the mission communicator confirmed.

Stephanie looked at the woman and shook her head in wonder at the obtuseness involved in the reply.  The clock ticked on and on.

There was a crackle of static.  “Malcolm here.  They report four fatalities, trying to stop the cold front.  I am now down and hovering.  The auto-separation software appears adequate.  We are maintaining a steady one meter separation with the body.  My copilot is aft, preparing to help the survivors board and direct them for stowage.”

The communicator looked at Stephanie who returned the look with no expression.  The communicator spoke into the microphone, “Roger, Trojan Rescue.  Continue per the mission plan.”

She finished speaking and Stephanie pointed a thumb at the woman and jerked it away from the hot seat.  Since there was no way the Space Service mission specialist could say no, the woman got up, leaving her headset for Stephanie.

The woman flipped Stephanie a bird, turned and stalked away.

The problem with the woman’s response was that at the moment the spacecraft were more than one and two-third's billion kilometers away, and the radio signals would take ninety-three minutes to get there, one way.  Telling them to continue the mission would arrive three hours and six minutes after Malcolm had done whatever it was he planning after his last report.

Stephanie put the headset over her head and looked at the communicator.  “You understand, that I understand, why you’ll never have this job again?  If you can’t figure it out, go check the message turnaround time up there on the wall.”

The familiar voice from quite some distance away continued on.  “We continue holding at the nominal distance above the surface!  The lidar and the control feedback loops are working perfectly.  We are holding at 1.00 meters above the surface and loading has commenced.  Pilot Officer Lambert is stowing our passengers.”

There was another pause.

“Loading is going a little slower than anticipated.  What’s happening is that they are walking one at a time across the surface, hopping aboard, and then Pilot Officer Lambert is stowing them.  The assistant manager, Miss Kelly, was briefed in advance and is making the life support connections.  That’s going nominally.  It’s just that they are taking more time than originally planned to board.”

Stephanie nodded in understanding.  At a couple of degrees Kelvin, you didn’t want to stand around waiting while the person ahead of you was being hooked up.  They were coming only once they had an all clear.  Only sensible!

Another lengthy pause.

“Lambert says we’ve just loaded number twelve.  That leaves twelve more.  I expect we’ll be about eighteen or twenty minutes over nominal on the loading time.”

Stephanie nodded.  Not that bad, even though they’d already added a substantial fudge factor to the loading time.

Time passed and Malcolm reported the last person aboard.  “Lambert is buttoning up.  We’re going to fill the cabin with about four pounds of nitrogen and two of oxygen.  It’ll be a little thin, but if anyone runs into a snag with their life support, it’ll give us a little extra time to fix it.  Assistant Manager Kelly, as per the plan, is now in the right hand seat.  Lambert’s standing in front of the main hatch.”