Powersat (The Grand Tour) (21 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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T
he glass double doors that separated the Astro Motel’s pocket-sized lobby from the bar were almost always kept open, so from her vantage point behind the registration desk, Kelly Eamons could see who was coming and going easily enough. Especially who’s going, she giggled to herself: the restrooms were on the far side of the lobby.
April Simmonds had pulled a few strings and gotten the motel’s manager to hire Eamons as their registration clerk for the night shift: four to midnight. The manager, an overweight son of the family that nominally ran the motel, took one look at Eamons and saw a cute redhead with a glad smile that filled his mind with visions of sugarplums. He himself had been manning the registration desk for the midnight-to-eight A.M. stint, so he moved his night clerk to the graveyard shift and retired to the manager’s office to spend his evenings watching television and trying to get Eamons to have dinner with him. The former night clerk quit, though, and the poor man had to go back to his former duties until he could hire a replacement.
He didn’t mind it too much. Most of the time there was nothing to do but watch the TV in the lobby, and he got to see Eamons every night when her shift was finished and his just beginning. Many nights, alone behind the desk except
for the late-night movies and news broadcasts, he thought about making it with Kelly right there on the big leather couch in front of the TV. Neither he nor anyone on Matagorda Island except April and Dan knew that this attractive, sunshiny redhead was an agent of the FBI.
Eamons smiled and jollied him along while she kept tabs on the patrons at the bar. Almost all of them were Astro employees; April knew most of them and gave Eamons access to the company’s personnel files.
April was doing more than that, though. With Eamons watching from the registration desk, April became a regular at the bar. She would come in at the end of the working day for the happy hour two-for-one drinks and stay until the crowd thinned out for dinner. Often she returned later at night, chatting with the Astro technicians and engineers she knew, allowing some of the men she didn’t know to buy her a drink or simply sit beside her at the bar and talk.
April always went home alone, as far as Eamons could see. She’s smart enough to handle these geek boys, Kelly told herself. Besides, she’s in love with Randolph. She’s not interested in any of these guys. Eamons had assured April that she could protect her. “I’m just a phone call away,” she said, brandishing her cell phone like a miniature club.
Eamons was living with April in the tidy one-bedroom apartment April rented in Lamar. She slept on the pull-out sofa in the living room and shared the tiny bathroom. They always drove to Matagorda separately, of course: April first thing in the morning, Eamons late in the afternoon. They didn’t want anyone to know they were working together.
Mornings, over breakfast, they would compare notes, exchange information. The trouble was, Eamons soon realized, that there was precious little information to exchange. April was getting earfuls about who was unhappy with his wife, who was looking for a new job, who was chasing whom. Nothing substantial, though. Nothing that would help with the investigation. Eamons carefully refrained from telling April that Nacho Chavez, back in Houston, was warning her
that the Bureau’s higher-ups were talking about terminating the investigation for lack of results.
She found that she enjoyed being out of the office, in the field, even if the work was boring and unproductive. She enjoyed living with April and found herself wondering what it would be like to sleep in the same bed with her.
Dan Randolph had returned from Venezuela, full of mysterious smiles, and the engineers were checking out the rocket plane in preparation for its mating to a booster rocket.
Most mornings Eamons made breakfast for the two of them while April dressed for the office.
“Are we getting anywhere?” April asked from the bedroom while Eamons gingerly pulled slices of toast from the pop-up toaster. They never pop the slices high enough, she thought, snatching at the crumbly bread and trying to drop it in the plate before she burned her fingertips.
April stepped through the bedroom doorway, wearing a scooped-neck lilac blouse and a straight-line knee-length skirt of slightly darker hue, tall and sleek and every inch the modern, capable woman. Kelly felt distinctly short and shabby in her shapeless bathrobe.
Eamons thought, That man Randolph is a damned fool. She’s really beautiful and he doesn’t pay any attention to her. Is it because she’s black? Aw hell, men are all crazy, anyway.
“Are we getting anywhere?” April repeated as she pulled up one of the stools before the kitchenette’s breakfast bar.
Eamons shrugged and put the toast down on the counter. “You’ve checked out all of Larsen’s friends. He definitely wasn’t a gambler.”
April nodded glumly. “We knew that the morning after he was murdered.”
“My office has sent the recording on Larsen’s answering machine to Washington for voice analysis. If the man speaking has ever been arrested on a federal charge, we might have a voice match somewhere in the files.”
“That would be something.” April picked at her scrambled eggs. Eamons was not much of a cook; try as she might, her attempts at sunny-side up always came out scrambled.
Trying to cheer April, Eamons said, “My grandfather was a stonemason back in Cass County. He used to say to me, sometimes you chip and chip and chip away at the stone but it doesn’t crack. Just sits there, stubborn, no matter how hard you’ve sweated over it. And then, all of a sudden, you hit it one more time and it splits open for you.”
“I wish,” April said glumly. “I mean, I’ve talked with just about everybody Pete knew. I’ve sat at that bar and listened and asked questions until I’m ready to puke. And we don’t know anything now that we didn’t know the morning after he was killed.”
Eamons was tempted to contradict her, but she kept silent. What April said was true enough. But what April didn’t know was that her asking questions, her insistent poking around among all those who knew Pete Larsen, might be bothering whoever it was who murdered the man. The people who destroyed the spaceplane and killed Tenny also murdered Larsen. They must have other informants inside Astro Corporation, Eamons thought. They must have eyes watching and ears listening. If April asks enough questions, maybe they’ll get worried enough to do something about it.
Or maybe they won’t, Eamons had to admit to herself. Their smartest move would be to do nothing. They’ve done their damage, why stick around? Just get out and stay out and nobody will ever figure out who they are.
On the other hand, Randolph is pushing ahead, struggling to keep his company going. Maybe they’ll figure they have to strike again to stop him once and for all.
“I’m off to work.” April pushed her unfinished eggs away and got up from the stool.
Eamons walked with her to the apartment’s front door. “See you tonight at the motel,” she said.
“Right,” said April.
Eamons closed the door and leaned against it. It’s a helluva plan you’re working, she groused to herself. The best thing that can happen is they try to kill her. Some helluva plan, all right.
E
ven this early in the morning the thunderheads were piling up over the Gulf, Dan saw. A stiff wind was blowing in from the water as he stood at the edge of the launch platform, Lynn Van Buren beside him, and craned his neck up at the rocket booster standing sixteen stories high, wrapped inside the heavy steel lattice of the service gantry tower.
“The latest weather forecast ain’t good, chief,” Van Buren said, raising her voice over the gusting wind. “They’ll probably be posting a hurricane watch by ten A.M.”
“Then what?” Dan snapped. “An earthquake?”
“We can’t take a chance on having the booster ride out a hurricane in the open,” Van Buren said.
Dan knew she was right. Don’t mess with Mother Nature, he told himself. Some mother. Why can’t she wait until after we get the bird off?
“Niles has his people tying down the spaceplane in Hangar B,” Van Buren said.
Dan chuckled, despite everything. Niles Muhamed isn’t going to let anybody put “his” spaceplane in jeopardy. He pictured Niles standing at the door to Hangar B and forcing the hurricane to keep away, like old King Canute trying to stop the tide from coming in.
“She could ride out a storm,” Dan shouted over the rising wind. “She’s clamped down good and the gantry’s holding her. We calculated a booster could stand up to winds of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, didn’t we?”
“And what if the calculations were too optimistic?” Van Buren yelled back. “What if we get a hundred-and-sixty-mile-an-hour storm? Or a hundred-and-eighty?”
Dan frowned at her. He dearly wanted to avoid the cost of
taking the booster down, towing it back, and setting it up again after the storm.
“And there’s the rain, too,” Van Buren went on, relentlessly. “Pounding rain for god knows how many hours. She oughtta be inside shelter, safe and dry.”
Dan nodded reluctantly, his eyes on the line of trees that marked the edge of the state park. They were tossing fitfully now against the gray clouds scudding across the sky. Soon their leaves will be blowing off, then whole branches. Lots of debris is going to be flying around, he thought.
“Okay,” he said grudgingly. “Take her down.”
He turned and clambered down the launch platform’s steel steps, then walked swiftly to his waiting Jaguar. It took less than five minutes to drive to Hangar A, but Dan thought the sky darkened noticeably in that short time. Once he parked in his slot he pulled up the top on the convertible and locked it down tight. The car had never leaked before, but it had never gone through a hurricane, either.
The sound of the wind was an eerie wail inside the hangar. Now we’ll see if these buildings really will stand up to hurricane winds, Dan thought as he hustled up the stairs to his office. We’re high enough above sea level so we don’t have to worry about storm surges. Then he thought, Unless we get a tidal wave. That would be the finishing touch.
April was at her desk, looking worried. Her computer screen showed an animated weather map. Dan saw the big swirling cyclonic clouds of Hurricane Fernando out in the Gulf moving remorselessly toward the Texas coast.
“Heading our way, huh?” he asked, half-sitting on the corner of her desk.
“Straight toward us,” April replied, her voice a little quavery.
“You’d better get out of here while the ferry’s still running.”
“I’ve still got to get this order for liquid hydrogen processed.”
“It can wait.”
With the hydrogen facility destroyed by the explosion, Dan had to purchase liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for
the spaceplane from a commercial supplier. He had asked April to handle the task, bypassing his purchasing department because he didn’t know whom he could trust within his own company.
April said, “I can stay—”
“No. We won’t get much work done today. The launch is scrubbed and the crew’s going to tow the bird back into its hangar. Get on home, kid.”
“What about the others?”
“Get on the P.A. and tell ’em that everybody except the launch crew can go home for the day. If the ferry stops they can stay at the motel, on the company.”
The motel was the island’s official storm refuge. It was stocked with emergency food and water and had its own auxiliary power generator for electricity.
As April patched her desk phone into the public address system Dan went into his office. Too nervous to sit at his desk, he stood by the window and watched the booster being lowered to its side by the gantry crane.
Feeling helpless, restless, and more than a little scared, Dan paced his office for a few minutes, then headed back out.
April stopped him. “Call for you from Venezuela,” she said. “Señor Hernandez.”
“He’s got a great sense of timing,” Dan grumbled, turning back to his office. Over his shoulder he said, “I told you to go home, April. Git!”
Sliding into his desk chair, Dan tapped the phone’s ON key. Rafael Hernandez’s handsome face filled his display screen.
“Señor Hernandez,” Dan said, putting on an amiable smile. “Good morning.”
Hernandez smiled back.
“Buenas dias,
Mr. Randolph. How are you this lovely day?”
Dan couldn’t see much past Hernandez’s head and shoulders. He appeared to be in an office of some kind.
“It may be a fine day in Caracas,” he said. “We have a hurricane bearing down on us.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed.”
Totally unperturbed by Dan’s troubles, Hernandez said calmly, “I have called to inform you that all the necessary arrangements have been made. You may send your technicians to Caracas as soon as you wish. I will see that they meet the airport’s director of flight operations and anyone else they will need to interact with.”
Dan broke into a genuine smile. “That’s very good news, Señor Hernandez.”
“I am pleased also, Mr. Randolph.”
That means he checked his bank account in Washington and found the money I deposited there, Dan knew.
Aloud, he said, “Please, call me Dan. We’re going to be partners, after all.”
Hernandez dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “And you must call me Rafael.”
They chatted for a few minutes more, then Hernandez pleaded the press of other business and cut the connection. A gust of wind rattled the steel wall of Dan’s office. He looked out the window and saw that it was almost as dark as night. No rain, though. Not yet.
Maybe I should get over to the motel, he said to himself. Then he answered himself: No. I’ll ride it out here. If these hangars don’t hold up to the storm then I might as well be drowned along with everything else.

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