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Authors: Ben Bova

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“F
or a suit, you’re not a bad engineer,” Tenny said, his dark jowly face dead serious.
Dan took it as a compliment. He was kneeling alongside the twisted wreckage of what had once been the spaceplane’s nose cap. Tenny was squatting on the hangar floor, facing him. Claude Passeau stood on the other side of the nose cap, looking almost elegant in his neatly creased slacks and jacket, although he had pulled his bow tie loose from its collar.
Even this late at night the hangar had been buzzing with government investigators and Astro technicians. With Passeau’s help Dan had shooed them all home. Now only the three men remained in the brightly lit hangar.
The twisted bits of remains from the spaceplane were laid out precisely in their proper places inside the taped outline of the vehicle’s swept-wing shape, exuding a faint odor of charred metal. Every time Dan looked at the wreckage he felt his guts wrench. But he forced a rueful grin.
“Coming from you, Joe,” Dan replied, “that’s pretty high praise.”
Passeau said, “Your degree was in engineering, wasn’t it?”
“And economics,” Dan replied. “Double major.”
“And then you went to Japan to work for Yamagata Corporation.”
Dan got to his feet. “You know a lot about me.”
With a shrug, Passeau said, “You interest me, Mr. Randolph.”
“Dan.”
“Thank you.” Passeau touched his moustache with a fingertip, then said, “Why did you go to Japan? Weren’t there jobs in the States?”
“Not the kind of jobs I wanted. The U.S. space program was just spinning its wheels: scientific research but not much else. Yamagata was building a power satellite. Just a demo, of course, but it meant I could get into space and work in orbit. Real work, building something practical up there three hundred miles high.”
Tenny clambered to his feet, too. “I never been up there. You get space-sick?”
“A little woozy the first hour or so,” Dan admitted. “After four or five flights, though, you learn to adjust. Then it’s terrific.”
“Zero gravity, you mean,” Passeau said.
“I hear the sex is terrific,” quipped Tenny.
Dan laughed. “I wouldn’t know. We were in spacesuits most of the time.”
“You spent weeks up there on each mission, didn’t you?” Passeau asked.
Nodding, Dan said, “Yep. But there were only a handful of women up there and they were all Japanese. They wouldn’t have anything to do with a
ketoujin.”
Tenny smirked. “That’s how he got his nose busted.”
“Really?”
“No, but Joe likes to think so.”
The three men laughed mildly. Then Tenny brought them back to the here-and-now.
“The nose thruster’s fuel control valve is wide open,” he said, jabbing a thumb at the twisted wreckage. “It should be shut.”
“It might have been jarred loose when it hit the ground,” said Passeau.
“Maybe,” said Tenny. “But take a look at it. It’s locked in the open position.”
Dan took the battered assembly from Tenny’s hands and tried to close the valve. It refused to budge. “Joe’s right,” he said to Passeau. “It’s locked in the open position. If it had banged open from the crash it’d be flapping loose.”
Passeau fingered his moustache again, thinking. “Then the thruster must have fired during reentry.”
“And kept on firing until all its fuel was exhausted,” Dan added.
“What could have caused that?” asked Passeau.
Dan shot a warning glance at Tenny.
“That’s what we’ve gotta find out,” the engineer said.
“And quickly,” Dan added.
Tenny puffed out a breath. “Well, we ain’t gonna find it standing around here until the sun comes up. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve got a home and a family that expects to see me now and then.”
Sighing, Passeau said, “I’m living in your wonderful Astro Motel, the only facility between here and civilization, until this investigation is finished.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “And their bar closed two hours ago.”
Dan thought of all the nights he had spent at hotel bars, and the women he had picked up at them. “You’re not missing much, Claude,” he said.
Passeau hiked his brows suggestively. “One never knows. To give up all hope would be a tragedy.”
Laughing together, the three men began walking slowly out of the hangar, leaving the wreckage behind them. Dan nodded to the uniformed security guard standing at the tightly closed hangar door. Two more guards were supposed to be on duty, he knew. Probably making the rounds.
He walked Passeau and Tenny to the parking lot, where the FAA inspector got into his rental Buick Regal and Tenny hauled himself up into his remodeled Silverado. The only pickup in Texas that ran on hydrogen fuel. But then, only someone who had access to Astro’s hydrogen facility could find enough fuel to run the truck. Not even the NASA center near Houston had a hydrogen generation system.
Dan waved the two men good night and headed for his
own compact apartment up on the catwalk back inside the hangar.
The thruster’s fuel valve was commanded to open and lock during reentry, he mused as he started up the steel stairs. Somebody sent a bogus signal to the bird.
He stopped halfway up the stairs, his footfalls echoing off the hangar’s metal walls. Which means, Dan said to himself, that somebody really did deliberately sabotage the spaceplane. Hannah’s death wasn’t an accident. It was murder.
Slowly, he started up the stairs again, running it through his mind. Which means that somebody was able to override our command codes and radio the bogus signal to the plane’s computer. Which means that the saboteur had access to our command codes.
As he opened the door to his one-room apartment, Dan came to the inescapable conclusion: Which means that there’s a spy in my company somewhere. A saboteur who wrecked the spaceplane and killed Hannah.
T
he apartment was always neat and clean when Dan came back to it from his day’s work. His office was barely fifty yards down the catwalk that circled three walls of the hangar, but Tomasina, his dour-faced, stocky cleaning woman, always managed to get in and straighten the place, even if Dan was gone for only a few minutes. She cleaned his clothes, washed his dishes, and kept the apartment shipshape, all without getting in Dan’s way. Most of the time he didn’t even know she’d been there, except that the place was spotless and tidy. Once in a while she’d leave him a note in neat, large block letters, ordering cleaning supplies that were running low.
As he undressed, Dan wondered what he should do about the problem he faced. I’ve got a spy working somewhere in the company, he kept repeating to himself. How do I find him? Hire a private investigator? Tell Passeau about it? He could get the FBI in here, I suppose.
Yet he hesitated, uncertain. Who can I trust? he asked his image in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. Joe Tenny, I know. Joe’s put as much of himself into this project as I have. Hannah was like a sister to him. No, more like a grown-up daughter.
As he climbed into his king-sized bed, Dan realized that his list of people he could trust ended with Tenny. He didn’t know anybody else in the eight-hundred-odd men and women he employed well enough to trust them implicitly. Any one of them could be the spy, the saboteur.
Wait, he said as he clicked off the bedside lamp. Whoever it is has to be technically trained. It couldn’t be April, for example. She can run the office all right, but she’s no engineer.
But then he thought, That could all be an act A saboteur wouldn’t have to show his technical skills. Or hers. What do they call them in the spy business? Moles, he remembered. I’ve got a mole in my organization.
He lay on his back in the darkness, his mind spinning. Stop thinking, he commanded himself. Get to sleep. Let your subconscious work the problem. By the time you get up tomorrow morning you’ll probably have the answer you need.
He decided he had given himself good advice, turned over onto his side and closed his eyes. But sleep did not come to him. Instead, he remembered seeing Jane again, with Governor Scanwell.
 
 
T
he fund-raiser in Austin had been such a big bash that Dan thought he’d never be able to speak privately with the governor, but Len Kinsky kept telling him to be patient.
“Half the people in Texas are trying to see Scanwell,” Kinsky said over the buzz and clatter of the crowd as they
stood by one of the bars that had been set up across the spacious sweep of the hotel’s atrium.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Dan grumbled, sipping at his disappointing Dry Sack. “We’ll hang around all night and never get to talk to him.”
“Wait it out,” said Kinsky. “Hang in there. The drinks are free, aren’t they?”
“And so’s dinner,” Dan admitted.
Kinsky made a sour face to show what he thought of Texas cuisine.
Dan wanted to leave. He didn’t like seeing Jane standing there beside Scanwell. It bothered him, annoyed him. This is the life she chose, he told himself. She’s a politician and she loves all this. Dan wanted to run away.
Instead he weaved through the crush of strangers, nursing his drink and smiling mechanically at the men in their dinner jackets and the begowned and bejeweled women. He didn’t know any of them and none of them knew him. He deliberately moved away from Kinsky, who was talking to a young blonde, a wolfish grin on his face. Wandering through the crowd, Dan wondered why he was wasting his time; he wanted to get away but knew he would stay until the bitter end.
He saw a young redhead who seemed to be equally out of place, alone, clutching a long-stemmed glass of champagne in one hand and an expensive-looking beaded bag in her other. She wore a glittering short-skirted outfit of red and black sequins.
“You’re wearing my high school colors,” Dan said to her, by way of introducing himself.
She was deeply unimpressed, and after a few words Dan drifted away from her. No sense of humor, he decided.
Kinsky found him again when they went into the ballroom, where a sea of round tables had been set up for dinner. Dan and his public relations director sat with eight older men and women. When one of them asked Dan what he did for a living and Dan began to explain it, he quickly changed the subject to golf.
Teams of harried-looking waiters and waitresses slapped dishes onto the table. Broiled steak and baked potatoes, with a medley of overcooked vegetables. Dan glanced at Kinsky: the P.R. director looked like a martyr heading toward the scaffold.
Scanwell made a few remarks from the head table about the wonderful charity this dinner was supporting. Dan hardly heard him. He watched Jane, sitting there beside the governor’s place. She was splendid, completely in her element, smiling and chatting with the others at the head table.
The speeches seemed endless to Dan, a succession of men and women congratulating one another on the wonderful work they were doing. Yeah, Dan said to himself, and not one of them gives a good god damn about the wonderful work
I’m
trying to do.
He was startled when Kinsky tapped him on the shoulder.
“I told you he’d come through,” Kinsky whispered, leaning so close to Dan that he thought the man was going to stick his tongue in his ear. Kinsky was holding a small white card on which was scrawled the numbers 2335.
“He wants to meet you in his suite,” Kinsky whispered.
Dan took the card in his hand and turned it over. It was the governor’s calling card, complete with the seal of office, his “hotline” phone number, and official e-mail address.
Scanwell didn’t stay for all the speeches. He got up, shook every hand along the head table, and made his apologies for leaving early. Jane went with him.
“Come on,” Kinsky said, nudging Dan again.
Feeling as if he really wanted to get out of this hotel, out of Austin altogether, Dan pushed his chair back and got to his feet. He followed Kinsky up the glass elevator to the twenty-third floor.
When they got out of the elevator a pair of unsmiling uniformed state policemen big enough to play in the National Football League checked their IDs and directed them down the hall. Dan pushed the doorbell button; an aide in a dinner jacket and black tie immediately opened the door and ushered them into the suite. It was richly carpeted,
furnished in big plush pieces and polished oak. The drapes were drawn over windows that spanned two walls of the sitting room.
Scanwell was sitting back on the long sofa, his jacket off, his tie loosened, and a cut crystal tumbler of bourbon in his hand.
“Hello, Governor,” Dan said. “It’s good of you to give us some of your time.”
“Come on in,” Scanwell called to Dan and Kinsky. Gesturing to the bar, “Have a drink.” The governor perched his booted feet on the coffee table.
Jane was nowhere in sight. Two more aides were standing by the bar, the man wearing slacks and a light brown sports jacket, the woman in a tailored pantsuit. Obviously neither one of them had been at the dinner downstairs. Then Dan noticed the butt of a pistol inside the guy’s jacket. Bodyguards.
Dan reached for the San Pellegrino water from the row of bottles lined up atop the bar.
“There’s beer in the fridge if you prefer,” the male aide said. “Lone Star longnecks.”
Dan made a smile and poured the water. “Thanks anyway,” he said, thinking that he’d better stay sober through this meeting.
“I think y’all can wait outside in the hall,” Scanwell said to his aide and the bodyguards. “I’ll yell if I need anything.”
As they were leaving Jane came in from the bedroom, smoothing her hair. Dan’s breath caught in his throat. She smiled uncertainly at him, then went to the sofa and sat beside Scanwell.
“C’mon over,” Scanwell said, waving to Dan. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Dan took the upholstered chair on the opposite side of the glass coffee table. Kinsky sat off to one side.
Scanwell gave Dan a friendly grin. “What I’d like to know,” he said, “is how you talked my parks department into letting you lease part of a state park and turn it into your rocket base:” Dan realized that the governor’s voice was slightly hoarse. Too much talking over the noise of the crowd, he thought.
Grinning back at the governor, Dan replied, “They needed
the cash. Budget deficits and all that. But it still wasn’t easy. I had to sweet-talk sixteen different staffs of bureaucrats to let me use the old Wynne ranch property.”
Scanwell shook his head. “I caught a lot of flak over that when I ran for reelection.”
“But Calhoun County voted for you very solidly,” Dan countered. “They appreciate the new jobs.”
“How many engineers do you have down there?”
“It’s not just the engineers. It’s the people who run the new ferry. And the motel. And the truck drivers and road crews and building trades people. They all vote, and they all like the paychecks they’re getting.”
“But how did you ever get it past my environmental protection people?”
Dan’s smile widened. “Governor, NASA’s big Kennedy Space Center sits right alongside the Cape Canaveral National Wildlife Reserve. Launching rockets doesn’t bother the pelicans.”
Scanwell cocked his head slightly to one side. “Well maybe so. Still, you must be a very convincing guy … .”
“Dan can be extremely convincing,” Jane said without a smile, “when he wants to be.”
“Jane’s been telling me about your project,” Scanwell said.
“I’ll be frank with you, Governor,” Dan said. “My company’s in deep financial trouble.”
Scanwell nodded sympathetically. “So I hear.”
“But if I can make it work,” Dan went on, “if I can start to deliver electrical power from the satellite, it will change the energy picture for America. For the whole world.”
“That’s a big if, though, isn’t it?”
“Not as far as the technology is concerned. We know how to make the satellite work. It’s the economics that’s a bitch.”
Scanwell laughed. “Isn’t it always?”
Jane said, “Energy independence could be a major part of Morgan’s campaign.”
Morgan, Dan thought. She calls him by his first name.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Scanwell said, his brows knitting. “Making energy independence a major campaign issue
will mean the oil interests line up solidly against me. A lot of money there.”
“And power,” Dan agreed.
“You’ve fought against them before,” Jane pointed out. “And won.”
Scanwell grinned forlornly. “Yeah, I squeaked past ’em for governor. But Garrison and his people will work their butts off against me now.”
“Garrison?” Dan asked. Then he realized that of course Garrison of Tricontinental Oil would be against any candidate who threatened his power.
“It’ll be tough, but I’m willing to slug it out with them,” said the governor, “if I can show that we have a practical alternative to importing foreign oil.”
Kinsky offered, “Well, I think we can help you there. Solar power satellites could play a major role in making America independent of overseas oil.”
“That so?” Scanwell asked, looking squarely at Dan.
“Yes, it is, Governor. With power satellites and nuclear plants we—”
“People are scared of nuclear,” the governor objected.
Dan groused, “Yeah, they’d rather have blackouts.”
“Power satellites don’t present any environmental problems,” Kinsky said, trying to bring the conversation back on point. “It’s solar energy. Nobody’s scared of solar energy.”
“But you’re in trouble now,” Scanwell said to Dan.
“Deep trouble,” Dan admitted. “To be perfectly honest, I need all the help I can get, Governor.”
Before Scanwell could reply, Jane said, “The support of a major presidential candidate would help you to raise money, wouldn’t it?”
Dan nodded warily. “Sure, once your campaign gets underway. Problem is, I need help now.”
“And a promise of government funding after Morgan’s elected,” Jane added. “That would be even better in the long run, wouldn’t it?”
“Wellll,” Dan said, drawing out the word, “government funding could be a two-edged sword.”
Scanwell’s brows knit in puzzlement.
Kinsky jumped in, “What Dan means—”
“What I mean is that federal funding will bring all sorts of government oversight and red tape. NASA will want to run the show. Every congressional committee this side of the Moon will want to stick their fingers in.”
Jane looked nettled, but Scanwell broke into a big grin. “You’re completely right But what else could the government do to help you, once I’m elected?”
Hunching forward in his chair, Dan said, “Offer backing for loans. The same way the government did for Lockheed and Chrysler when they were in trouble.”

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