“. . . You should ask yourself why I’m being denied my legal rights,” Neva holds forth, her awaiting helicopter thud-thudding, the windsock darting frantically.
The pilot has cut the throttle to flight idle but he’s not shutting down, implying an imminent departure.
“. . . What are people hiding?” Neva preaches like a seasoned politician. “Ask yourself why I’m forbidden any further investigation into what happened to her, ensuring that justice will be denied . . .”
While inside a brightly lit forensic evidence bay the size of a small hangar, Joan and her investigators are covered in white Tyvek protective clothing. They’re searching the burned-out shell of the Hellcat, and coming up empty handed . . .
As Dylan walks inside a morgue cooler . . .
At the same instant a gleaming black hearse glides through the receiving bay’s wide-open door that he neglected to close . . .
“Oh boy,” as I notice the Cadillac crest, the Landau top, and I ask ART to run the Virginia tag.
“Chamberlain & Sons Funeral Services and Crematorium,” and he gives me a Norfolk address.
“Seems legit enough, I guess. Any reason to think it’s not?” I ask his assessment of the hearse rolling to a stop near Joan’s improvised break area.
“I’m sorry. No further information.”
“Possibly the funeral home that’s picking up Vera Young’s body?”
“No further information,” he repeats. “I’m not finding any reference that identifies the funeral home.”
“What about news releases, social media, anything that might mention which crematorium? That it’s Chamberlain & Sons, in other words.”
“Negative. Finding no data.”
00:00:00:00:0
“MAKES SENSE,” I decide. “I’m sure certain parties want to keep a lid on which crematorium so reporters and a bunch of kooks don’t show up like a carnival.”
I’m watching Dylan on a display as he emerges from the cooler, wheeling out a pouched body on a gurney . . .
Steering it through the intake area, he parks it near the floor scale, walking off . . .
While the hearse sits inside the receiving bay, no one climbing out, the engine rumbling . . .
“We don’t know what body’s being picked up?” I try again.
We don’t, ART lets me know, and I go on to ask him how many people are on the NASA Langley campus right now. He tells me 63, showing me their locations, which facilities are being accessed and by whom. As I glance at the sitemap displayed on the dash, it doesn’t please me to discover all sorts of things going on that I know nothing about.
ID badge numbers are lit up on the map like squawk codes on an air traffic controller’s screen. Most are outside contractors, primarily from global aerospace giants like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman. And Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), I take note, thinking about what Dick said on his way out of Dodd Hall.
He mentioned a space capsule drop test this afternoon, and based on what I’m seeing, SNC has 8 employees here at the moment. Two at the full-scale wind tunnel, the rest are gathered at what most people know as the Gantry, where in the 1960s Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and other Apollo astronauts learned to land and walk on the moon.
Officially named the Landing and Impact Research Facility, the Gantry’s towering A-framed steel structure is rigged with cables, and a hydraulic bridge and hoist system capable of dropping an 18-ton Fokker F-28 airliner. Or it could be something much smaller like a flying car, experimental jetpacks, a spacecraft’s drogue parachute.
Whatever’s going on this afternoon, it must be quite the operation considering NASA is supposed to be closed. An additional 11 badge numbers on the sitemap belong to our folks, mostly engineers, crane operators, photographers and explosive experts. Taking a left at a frozen-over field of solar panels that aren’t generating electricity at the moment, I ask ART to give me a glimpse of the Gantry.
He connects to the live feed, and I hear a low-pitched diesel rumble and hydraulic humming, a cherry picker BEEP-BEEPING its warning. It’s piloted by an engineer named John from SNC, I know from his badge number and accompanying information. Bulky and restrained in his heavy clothing, safety harness and inflatable life vest, he rides the bright-yellow work platform through the wintry air.
He’s headed toward the full-size test model of a spacecraft suspended from a crane by a thick steel cable. A concept vehicle I’ve not seen before, let me add, 10 tons of aluminum, I estimate, the test model bullet shaped, white with gray metal plates covering the openings where thrusters and other components are built into the real deal, I imagine.
The engineer named John takes his foot off the switch, the edge of the cherry picker’s mobile platform stopping a kiss away from the multimillion-dollar test model. Opening the hatch with a socket wrench, he unplugs the data cable that’s been supplying power, and no question there’s a boatload of electronics inside.
There will be accelerometers, and all sorts of sensors for measuring motion, torque, pressure, position, force. Plus, strain gauges, load cells, software for data loggers and acquisition systems.
“Since when does SNC have a crewed space capsule in the works?” I wonder out loud, my suspicions gathering.
“Unauthorized,” ART replies as I drive through fields blanketed white.
“It’s not really a question because obviously they have one. I’m looking at it. How long has it been in development?”
“Unauthorized.”
“Well, with the exception of their Dream Chaser spaceplane, SNC is in the business of transporting cargo, not astronauts, last I heard,” I’m feeling territorial again.
ART has no comment.
“But that can’t be what this is because you generally don’t drop-test unmanned vehicles, cargo capsules. And that’s not what this thing looks like anyway.”
Silence.
“Well, if the test model they’re about to splash down includes crash dummies, then I’m going to be unhappy,” I get around to why I’m offended. “You can understand it, right?”
“I’m not sure of your question . . .”
“Connect me to the camera system inside the test model so I can see who or what’s inside,” I do my best to sit on my growing impatience.
“Unauthorized.”
“Well, then show me the full-scale anthropomorphic test devices inside the Gantry hangar, please.”
When he does, it’s like I’m spying on my kids with a nanny cam, checking on my collection of life-size dummies crowded in a corner amid a clutter of workbenches, tools, sensors, and anatomical pieces and parts. My faithful crew are male, female, adults and children, all of them good sports about being burned, broken, banged, bounced, badly stirred and shaken.
Simulating your average humans, the test devices with their deadweight movable limbs are too difficult to transport or lift without mechanical assistance. So, they live in their hospital-surplus wheelchairs, dressed in hooded Tyvek jumpsuits or scrubs, tennis shoes, a few sporting safety glasses.
Slumping a little, they always look a bit dispirited and put upon, their flesh-toned plastic hands limp in their laps, and somebody’s missing.
“Bump, Bang and Crush. Twister, Striker and Breaker,” I take an inventory. “I see Crackle and Pop but where’s Snap?” I ask, passing empty buildings and parking lots. “They’d better not be using her without checking with me first.”
The adult female mannequin is about my size, racially generic and nondescript with her lack of hair, 1,000-yard stare, and on and off over recent months I’ve given her quite the makeover. A new shoulder liner, spine box, and scapulae. Also, a modified neck base, and various pelvis replacement parts. Best of all, she’s packed with an embarrassment of sensors, many of the
m the same ones implanted inside Carme and me.
“The full-scale test device you refer to as Snap is currently unavailable,” ART informs me.
“Show me where she is,” I demand but not impolitely.
“Unauthorized.”
“Is she inside that SNC test model they’re about to drop?”
“Unauthorized.”
“Please log me into the camera system set up inside it,” I try again. “I want to see if Snap is strapped in, maybe to see how much of a load is on her spine when she hits the water.”
“Unauthorized,” and there’s no point in badgering him further.
“I get it, Dick or someone doesn’t want me knowing the details, don’t ask me why. Although he did say he’d hook up with me at the Gantry at some point,” I reason. “So, maybe he intends to tell me in person what’s happening, and what the big secret is.”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t either, ART. I don’t know much it seems,” as I plow through snow past Building 1230, home of the Autonomy Incubator for intelligent machines.
Drones of all shapes and sizes deploy from the top floor through a retractable hatch in the roof, their exercise yard a large outdoor netted area. All is quiet, no sign of anything amiss, but there’s a problem on East Taylor Street, bright red painted on my features-integrated map, the FIND in my heads-up display.
A water main must have cracked, turning the road and acres of grass on either side into a skating rink.
“We need to call this in for maintenance . . . ,” I start to say when my truck’s beefy ceramic brakes suddenly slam, sending me into a slide.
16
“WHAT THE . . . ?” I yell, skating across the glassy road as a fox safely scampers away thanks to sensors that reacted before I could.
I catch a flash of a white-tipped red tail while I careen sideways off the road, onto a solid river of ice . . .
“SHHHHHHHH . . . !”
I’m headed toward trees, the mass of the heavy SUV propelling it . . . Nothing I can do but keep my hands on the wheel and not fight it, sliding, sliding . . . slower . . . slower . . . and slower until I drift to a stop a good 15.2 meters (50 feet) from where I started.
“Great!” I blurt out loud. “I may as well be on a frozen lake! I’ll never get out of here, and has anybody bothered to report the broken water main by the way?”
“Negative,” ART says.
“Too bad. Maybe we wouldn’t have driven back here if we’d known,” I’m careful not to sound as aggravated as I feel, not interested in dishing out what I don’t want dished back. “Okay. Now what? Because I’m out of ideas.”
“A solution would be to melt the ice,” is ART’s simple response, and if I didn’t know better I’d think what just happened is another test.
But not even Dick could orchestrate a fox running across the road as I reach a broken water main that’s created an impassible river of ice several inches thick. As I think of the Tahoe’s special features, I agree with ART. This might be an opportune moment to fire up the flamethrower housed in the rear right storage box.
“If we do rapid short pulses, we can melt what’s behind me a car length at a time,” I work out how best to avoid blowing up my truck.
The operation is straightforward, I’m shown on a menu, and I select the FLTH’s manual mode. That way I’m in control when I want to breathe fire, and I almost come out of my skin the first time I squeeze the trigger on the joystick.
“WHOA!” as a wall of flames billows up behind me.
I shove the shifter into reverse, using the cameras and mirrors to navigate. Inching along, I hit the trigger again, clearing ice one burst at a time. Backing up, scorching away, and at this rate we’ll be here all day. All I’m doing is clearing a narrow path behind me and creating no real room to maneuver. What’s needed is to melt as much ice as I can in all directions.
“Screw it,” I place both feet on the pedals NASCAR-style. “And I didn’t mean you, ART.”
“Copy.”
“Let’s do this. Please switch to hill-climbing gear and turn off traction control.”
“Wilco.”
“Hold on to your hat, and I don’t mean it literally!” as I step on the brake and the gas, cutting the steering wheel as sharply as it will go while working the trigger of the flamethrower.
I’m in the midst of a well-executed fiery doughnut (if I say so myself) when ART announces I have an incoming call.
“Deputy Chief Fran Lacey,” he says over the roaring engine as I paint a circle of fire.
“Not a good time!” which of course he misunderstands, perhaps assuming I’m not having a good time, and I wanted him to know it.
Whatever his computer brain unfortunately has concluded, he puts Fran through before I can tell him not to as I make another flaming orbit. I’m slowly spinning along like a fire-breathing dragon chasing its tail, the engine straining, tires smoking, ice melting and steaming.
“Where are you?” Fran asks crankily over speakerphone, and I’m back on the road, leaving a shallow lake in my hellish wake.
“Behind the data center where there’s a broken water main,” I let her know, taking a few deep breaths as my heart slows. “You don’t sound happy. What’s wrong besides everything?”
“A reported problem in 1205, a possible 10-15,” and no wonder she’s irked.
“What makes you think there’s a chemical leak?” I want to know. “And who’s over there now?”
“Supposedly a hissing sound, anonymously reported. It’s probably some furloughed scientist making a crank call just to piss everybody off. Well guess what, it’s working. I’m pissed off, don’t have time for crap piled on more crap, especially with so few of us here.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” I reply, on Langley Boulevard, the unplowed snow hard packed and rutted with patches of pavement showing through.
I also don’t like that she has to bug me about it when I’m on my way to headquarters for an important interview involving a 10-year-old boy and indirectly my father. I also understand all too well that Fran with all her phobias has no interest in being around something that might explode, poison, burn or electrocute.
“When did the call come in?” I inquire.
“A few minutes ago,” she says, and I can see Scottie’s and Butch’s ID numbers on my sitemap.
At the moment both of them are inside their shared office at our headquarters, or their smartcards are, that’s for sure, possibly stuck in the readers of their computers. I suggest that Fran have them follow up on the call, and perhaps get the fire department to respond.
“They’re tied up with me,” she lets me know neither investigator is available. “So, I’d appreciate it if you’d take care of it.”
I’ve reached the traffic circle, and up ahead, Langley’s iconic giant white vacuum spheres vaguely shine like prehistoric full moons or monster PONGs.
“We’re going over the suicide from the Point Comfort Inn,” Fran explains. “And obviously, if there really is something hissing when you’re doing your walk-through, we’ll send in the fire guys to deal with it. But I don’t want to do that if it’s a crank call.”
“I guess I can swing by really quick,” I answer unenthusiastically, the facility in question the Fatigue and Fracture Laboratory (another exciting name).
Mostly what goes on inside Building 1205 (and has for decades) is research into the effects of noise, vibrations, extreme temperatures and environmental factors on aerospace structures and components. It sounds nerdy and unexciting unless you know what’s inside that 1960s brick building in the center of the campus.
Some of Langley’s most dangerous solvents, chemicals and gases are stored in there. I’m
talking really scary stuff like liquid nitrogen, cyanide and hydrochloric acid used in metallurgy and experiments with composites. And a reference to something “hissing” is nothing to sneeze at.
00:00:00:00:0
“DON’T FORGET I’m talking to Lex Anderson at 1700 hours,” I remind Fran. “Isn’t it about time for you to pick him up if you haven’t already?”
I’m driving past the construction site for the new Measurement Systems Lab, 6 floors wrapped in Tyvek, and snow-covered tarps and dumpsters. Nobody is working.
“Already did when I was out at lunchtime. He’s in the conference room watching TV,” she replies as if it’s no big deal, nothing more than babysitting. “Waiting for you with bells on. We made a Dunkin’ run, got him a sandwich.”
“Are you telling me Lex has been alone in our conference room most of the afternoon?” I can’t believe it, my blood running cold.
“Watching TV, like I said. It’s not like he can get into any trouble in there with all of us a few doors away.”
“That makes me nervous, Fran. He’s in our department’s conference room alone and unsupervised,” and as I say it ART connects me to the security live feed.
I see Lex on camera, sitting at the long oval table. A flat-screen on the wall is tuned to NASA TV, a special on the James Webb Space Telescope with its tennis court–size sunshield and 18 hexagonal beryllium mirrors coated in gold.
“. . . The most powerful space telescope ever built,” the narrator is saying. “And soon it will be headed to the sun, folded up like a bird inside the fairing of an Ariane 5 rocket . . .”
Lex isn’t watching or listening, too busy with his phone, his red hair as bright as a new penny in the overhead lights. He looks smaller, younger than his 10 years in baggy jeans, a sweatshirt, and rubber snow boots . . .
“I’m logged into our security cameras,” I tell Fran over my truck’s speakerphone. “So, right this second I’ve got my eyes on him,” and she’s used to me monitoring our cameras as a matter of course. “I’m looking at Lex inside the conference room. Why does he have his phone? That was a very bad idea.”
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 13
