The Inner Circle (29 page)

At the mention of Emily, Neil felt his throat tighten, but having already lamented on the sadness and grief of leaving behind his little girl, he was able to think and speak clearly without getting emotional. He would have enough time during his long journey to miss his daughter. For now, he had to concentrate on the task at hand and that meant remaining poised and focused. Neil explained to Armour that he told his daughter – in broad terms – about how he had to leave her.

"I think she somehow knows I won't be coming back," Neil said, his tough exterior beginning to crack.

“She must be a brave little girl to understand something like this," Armour said.

"She is," Neil said. "I learned a lot about that little girl over the past two years. I'm not sure I would have ever fully realized how special and wonderful she was if I wasn't allowed to spend so much time with her. I really want to thank you for arranging that."

Neil stuck his hand out and Armour took it. The NASA Chief could see the pain in Neil's eyes when he talked about his daughter and Armour suddenly felt remorseful that Neil – and not he himself – would be the one going on this mission. After all, Armour had no family of his own, nobody to save and nobody to miss him when he was gone. Neil had been the ideal candidate when they first recruited him, a drunk who was basically a nobody in this world and whom nobody would miss. But apparently, many things had changed since he was selected.

"Emily will be very proud of you one day. For that matter, the whole world will be very proud of you one day."

"Thank you, sir."

"I mean that. I've worked with countless numbers of incredible people over my years at NASA, but you are by far the bravest person I have ever known. If I was younger and asked to do something like this, I'm not sure I would have the courage to go through with it."

"I think you would have, sir."

"I appreciate that, but I'm still not sure I believe it. This will be the most difficult mission anyone has ever attempted and you will not survive to see the outcome of your years of labor. Before we go any further, if you have any doubt that you can’t accept the harsh reality of what you'll be doing, you must step down immediately."

These were the words that Neil had been hoping to hear for so long. Ever since he realized the joys of fatherhood, he regretted having ever accepted this mission. He knew that a replacement could be found and he would be able to stay on Earth and watch his daughter grow up.

"The hardest step is the first one. But once you take that step, there is no turning back," Armour said, turning his back from Neil and taking a step forward.

I think I'll pass...I'm going to stay...My daughter needs me...Go find someone else to die while saving the world...While saving the world for my daughter...

Now that Neil finally had a way of dropping out of the mission, he realized there was no way he could do that. After all, it was not every day that a father could give the world to his child.

Neil took a deep breath and stepped forward, essentially signing his death certificate for four and a half years from today.

"Let's get to work."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"It's incredible," Neil said, seeing the space probe fully completed for the first time. He had seen drawings and plans of how it was going to turn out. He had seen it a few times during its construction. He had even seen multiple pictures of it once the building was complete. But none of those could even come close to the awe the probe inspired in person.

"I can't believe how similar it turned out to the Mars probe I always imagined," Neil said quietly, as if whispering in the ship's presence displayed respect for the craft. "Why is it upright, though?"

"I can fix that," Armour said.

Armour crossed the hangar and went up the staircase. This hangar was built just like the old test-piloting hangar and Neil suddenly had flashbacks of the 'techies' retreating to their computers upstairs.

"Stand back," Armour called from the upper floor.

Neil moved back and looked up to see Armour standing in front of some kind of electrical equipment. The older man pushed a few buttons and Neil heard the groan of the thick metal coils that held the probe in place. The groaning noise worried Neil, whose mind produced a horrible image of the coils snapping and the probe crashing to the ground. Armour knew what he was doing though and after a few minutes of slowly lowering, the probe was perpendicular to the ground, in the position it would be when flying through space. Armour rejoined him a moment later, and the two men approached the space probe.

"The president was here a few days ago and I wouldn't even lower it for him. I thought it would be bad luck if you weren't the first person to see the probe's interior," Armour said.

Armour walked to the side of the probe, twisting a wheel until the door to the spacecraft opened. Until Armour waved him over, Neil nervously stayed still, standing where he was like a child waiting for permission. Neil stopped next to the small, circular opening, waiting to see if Armour was going to go inside first.

"You're going to want to see the inside, I think," Armour said, gesturing for Neil to enter.

Neil crawled through the small opening, glad at the moment that claustrophobia was not one of his weaknesses. It was a tight fit, but thankfully he squeezed inside of the probe. He knew that this first room was probably where he would be spending most of his time during the journey. It was the biggest of the three rooms he would have access to and the first thing that he noticed was the long, two-foot wide strip of glass that was on the far wall. He walked over to it, noting all of the buttons and the control system that were just to its side.

"The nuke firing system," Armour said, entering through the small crawl hole.

"I like the glass," Neil said. "I'll be able to see part of the nuke."

The glass area was only big enough to see a small part of the cylinder that would hold the nuke.

"The weapon will be installed so you’ll have a view of the timer on the nuke. Everything will be done by the computer’s firing system, so you won't really even need to worry about all of the buttons and controls here unless something bad happens."

Neil noted just how many different buttons there were for the nuke control system and he was glad that arming the bomb and setting the timer would be done automatically. He was good with buttons and systems that controlled a spacecraft, but not so confident when it came to things – like nuclear control systems – with which he had no experience.

"Come this way," Armour said.

Neil followed him into the room at the front of the craft. The entire probe was a circular shape, which meant the floor of the ship was not flat but rounded. It was not quite as easy to walk inside this ship when being held to the floor by gravity. He knew that would change once he’d be floating around.

The room at the very front of the ship looked like every other cockpit Neil had ever been inside. The only real difference he noticed was the presence of a single seat instead of the usual two, three or four. A large window in between two sets of control panels would allow Neil to see everything in front of him. The panels of multi-colored buttons looked just as Neil imagined they would, nearly the exact replica of every other spacecraft's control center.

The only thing that seemed out of place was the communication system, which was normally built in with the rest of the controls. The radio – which Neil would be using to communicate with Armour only – was off to the side, mounted away from the rest of the buttons. Neil found this curious, but Armour explained that traveling in deep space would make the communication system require more power than it normally would. They built it separately from the other controls so if it shorted out, no damage would be done to the rest of the systems, which were deemed more important than communications.

"Since everybody assumes this is an unmanned mission, everything during liftoff will be done via computer. This right over here, as I'm sure you already know, is the computer override system." He pointed to a small group of buttons with which Neil was already familiar. "That's about the only system, in the most dire of emergencies, that you would be forced to use. Arming and timing the bomb is done from its own system, which as I've shown you, is totally separate. But the actual firing mechanism uses power from the ship, meaning it can be controlled from here."

Neil already knew everything that Armour was explaining, but he did not want to interrupt the man.

"I suppose I could stand here and tell you exactly what's going to happen once you liftoff, but I have a report for you about the proceedings of Phase Two. Come on, let's finish the rest of this tour."

“Wait, there’s a Phase Two?” Neil asked.

“We couldn’t just shoot a probe off to space and have it disappear without questions being raised. But we’ll get to that part later.”

Before they left the control room, Armour pointed out a tiny piece of metal that protruded from the ground just in front of the control panels. He turned the piece of metal and lifted a panel out of the ground, showing Neil a hidden compartment that was full of manuals. The manuals included full schematics of the ship and all of its systems, in case any problems arose that Neil had to deal with. Neil took the first booklet from the top of the pile, and saw that it was labeled: ACCESSION CODES FOR WEAPON ARMING AND FIRING SYSTEM.

"You'd rather have them and not need them then need them and not have them. I'm not really sure if the manuals would help that much even if there was a problem, but you never know," Armour explained.

The tour proceeded to the final of three compartments, an area that was barely larger than the bed bolted to the floor. The bed itself did not look very comfortable, as it was nothing more than a hard surface with three leather straps across it. Neil did not look forward to having to strap himself down every time he wanted to take a nap, but he doubted he’d be able to sleep while floating around. This compartment also doubled as a storage area, as sliding open another panel led to Neil's food supply.

"This was the biggest problem," Armour explained, opening up the panel to show Neil the supply of dried food and bottled water that was stored. "You must be very careful not to consume too much food or water at a time. There is enough to last you the four years, but you'll be hungry every second of the trip and you can't give in."

They returned to the biggest of the three rooms and Armour pointed out the small, round windows that had been installed on each side of the craft. Neil looked out at the empty hangar bay, amazed that in less than a few day’s time, these windows would be overlooking space.

"Didn't the builders of the probe wonder why so many features needed to be built that would sustain human life on board? Weren't they told the probe was for an unmanned mission?" Neil asked.

"NASA has always been interested in sending a man on some kind of deep space mission," Armour explained. "We told the builders that such a mission was being considered, but we had to test such a spacecraft to make sure it would hold up on a long journey. So adding and testing all of these features is actually a secondary mission for the probe."

A part of Neil wanted to stay in the probe a while longer and study all of the different sections, but Armour assured him there would be plenty of free time once the mission started to better acquaint himself with all the ins and outs of the craft. They crawled back out of the probe and Armour led Neil toward the cylinder that would be housing the nuke.

"The night before liftoff, the nuke will be loaded into the probe. Many precautions have been taken for this part of the mission. I don't even want to consider what would happen if the probe crashed or exploded during liftoff," Armour said.

"Seems like bad luck to even consider that," Neil said. If the worst
did
happen during liftoff, the rescue mission to save the world would result in the immediate deaths of thousands of people in the surrounding area.

"I suppose, but we have to be realistic here. Attempting this mission is dangerous in itself and there would be no worse failure for NASA if this launch didn't go exactly as planned. But we've had our best workers on the job and I'm told the launch should go off without a hitch. The rest of the mission should be pretty routine as well," Armour said. "With the exception of the conclusion, that is."

"Let's just hope you get your big bang at the end and not the beginning," Neil said, trying to stay upbeat. The two men stood in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, neither really wanting to talk or think about the end of the mission any longer. Neil finally broke the silence, turning the tide of the conversation in a different direction. "I expected everyone else in the 'Inner Circle' to be here as well."

"As I said, the president was here a few days ago. He really wanted to be here for the launch, but if he'd attended a probe launch that is pretty inconsequential to most of the world, it might raise some red flags with the media. And being hassled by the press is the last thing we need."

"What about the others?" Neil asked.

"Mansfield goes where Marshall goes, so he's obviously back in D.C. We've had a few problems with Henry Wilson and Earl Ackerman as well, so they won't be attending either."

The last thing Neil needed right now was additional problems and the way Armour told him this worried him that something might have been messed up.