The Best of Bova

by Ben Bova

  The Yanks? I thought. This from a Jewish engineer from the Bronx High School for Science.

  I sighed longingly. “If Churchill were here today, I bet he’d push the SSZ for all it’s worth. He had the courage of his convictions, Churchill did.”

  Grand nodded, but said nothing and left me at my desk. The next morning, though, he came to my cubicle and told me to follow him.

  Glad to get away from my claustrophobic work station, I headed after him, asking, “Where are we going?”

  “Upstairs.”

  Management territory!

  “What for?”

  “To broach the concept of the supersonic zeppelin,” said Grand, sticking out his lower lip in imitation of Churchillian pugnaciousness.

  “The SSZ? For real?”

  “Listen, my boy, and learn. The way this industry works is this: you grab onto an idea and ride it for all it’s worth. I’ve decided to hitch my wagon to the supersonic zeppelin, and you should too.”

  I should too? Hell, I thought of it first!

  John Driver had a whole office to himself and a luscious, sweet-tempered executive assistant of Greek-Italian ancestry, with almond-shaped dark eyes and lustrous hair even darker. Her name was Lisa, and half the male employees of Anson Aerospace fantasized about her, including me.

  Driver’s desk was big enough to land a helicopter on, and he kept it immaculately clean, mainly because he seldom did anything except sit behind it and try to look important. Driver was head of several engineering sections, including APT. Like so many others in Anson, he had been promoted to his level of incompetency: a perfect example of the Peter Principle. Under his less-then-brilliant leadership APT had managed to avoid developing anything more advanced than a short-range drone aircraft that ran on ethanol. It didn’t fly very well, but the ground crew used the corn-based fuel to make booze that would peel the paint off a wall just by breathing at it from fifteen feet away.

  I let Grand do the talking, of course. And, equally of course, he made Driver think the SSZ was his idea instead of mine.

  “A supersonic zeppelin?” Driver snapped, once Grand had outlined the idea to him. “Ridiculous!”

  Unperturbed by our boss’ hostility to new ideas, Grand said smoothly, “Don’t be too hasty to dismiss the concept. It may have considerable merit. At the very least I believe we could talk NASA or the Transportation Department into giving us some money to study the concept.”

  At the word “money” Driver’s frown eased a little. Driver was lean-faced, with hard features and a gaze that he liked to think was piercing. He now subjected Grand to his piercingest stare.

  “You have to spend money to make money in this business,” he said, in his best Forbes magazine acumen.

  “I understand that,” Grand replied stiffly. “But we are quite willing to put some of our own time into this—until we can obtain government funding.”

  “Your own time?” Driver queried.

  We? I asked myself. And immediately answered myself, Damned right. This is my idea and I’m going to follow it to the top. Or bust.

  “I really believe we may be onto something that can save this company,” Grand was purring.

  Driver drummed his manicured fingers on his vast desk. “All right, if you feel so strongly about it. Do it on your own time and come back to me when you’ve got something worth showing. Don’t say a word to anyone else, understand? Just me.”

  “Right, Chief.” I learned later that whenever Grand wanted to flatter Driver he called him Chief.

  “Our own time” was aerospace industry jargon for bootlegging hours from legitimate projects. Engineers have to charge every hour they work against an ongoing contract, or else their time is paid by the company’s overhead account. Anson’s management—and the accounting department—was very definitely against spending any money out of the company’s overhead account. So I became a master bootlegger, finding charge numbers for my APT engineers. They accepted my bootlegging without a word of thanks, and complained when I couldn’t find a valid charge number and they actually had to work on their own time, after regular hours.

  For the next six weeks Wisdom, Rohr, Kurtz and even I worked every night on the supersonic zeppelin. The engineers were doing calculations and making simulator runs in their computers. I was drawing up a business plan, as close to a work of fiction as anything on the Best Sellers list. My social life went to zero, which was—I have to admit—not all that much of a drop. Except for Driver’s luscious executive assistant, Lisa, who worked some nights to help us. I wished I had the time to ask her to dinner.

  Grand worked away every night, too. On a glossy set of illustrations to use as a presentation.

  We made our presentation to Driver. The guys’ calculations, my business plan, and Grand’s images. He didn’t seem impressed, and I left the meeting feeling pretty gunky. Over the six weeks I’d come to like the idea of a supersonic zeppelin, an SSZ. I really believed it was my ticket to advancement. Besides, now I had no excuse to see Lisa, up in Driver’s office.

  On the plus side, though, none of the APT team was laid off. We went through the motions of the Christmas office party with the rest of the undead. Talk about a survivor’s reality show!

  I was moping in my cubicle the morning after Christmas when my phone beeped and Driver’s face came up on my screen.

  “Drop your socks and pack a bag. You’re going with me to Washington to sell the SSZ concept.”

  “Yessir!” I said automatically. “Er . . . when?”

  “Tomorrow, bright and early.”

  I raced to Grand’s cubicle, but he already knew about it.

  “So we’re both going,” I said, feeling pretty excited.

  “No, only you and Driver,” he said.

  “But why aren’t you—”

  Grand gave me a knowing smile. “Driver wants all the credit for himself if the idea sells.”

  That nettled me, but I knew better than to argue about it. Instead, I asked, “And if it doesn’t sell?”

  “You get the blame for a stupid idea. You’re low enough on the totem pole to be offered up as a sacrificial victim.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like it, but I had to admit it was a good lesson in management. I tucked it away in my mind for future reference.

  I’d never been to Washington before. It was chilly, gray and clammy; no comparison to sunny Phoenix. The traffic made me dizzy, but Driver thought it was pretty light. “Half the town’s on holiday vacations,” he told me as we rode a seedy, beat-up taxicab to the magnificent glass and stainless steel high-rise office building that housed the Transportation Department.

  As we climbed out of the smelly taxi I noticed the plaque on the wall by the revolving glass doors. It puzzled me.

  “Transportation and Urban Renewal Department?” I asked. “Since when . . . “

  “Last year’s reorganization,” Driver said, heading for the revolving door. “They put the two agencies together. Next year they’ll pull them apart, when they reinvent the government again.”

  “Welcome to TURD headquarters,” said Tracy Keene, once we got inside the building’s lobby.

  Keene was Anson Aerospace’s crackerjack Washington representative, a large round man who conveyed the impression that he knew things no one else knew. Keene’s job was to find new customers for Anson from among the tangle of government agencies, placate old customers when Anson inevitably alienated them, and guide visitors from home base through the Washington maze. The job involved grotesque amounts of wining and dining. I had been told that Keene had once been as wiry and agile as a Venezuelan shortstop. Now he looked to me like he was on his way to becoming a Sumo wrestler. And what he was gaining in girth he was losing in hair.

  “Let’s go,” Keene said, gesturing toward the security checkpoint that blocked the lobby. “We don’t want to be late.”

  Two hours later Keene was snoring softly in a straightbacked metal chair while Driver was showing the last of his Powerpoint images t
o Roger K. Memo, Assistant Under Director for Transportation Research of TURD.

  Memo and his chief scientist, Dr. Alonzo X. Pencilbeam, were sitting on one side of a small conference table, Driver and I on the other. Keene was at the end, dozing restfully. The only light in the room came from the little projector, which threw a blank glare onto the wan yellow wall that served as a screen now that the last image had been shown.

  Driver clicked the projector off. The light went out and the fan’s whirring noise abruptly stopped. Keene jerked awake and instantly reached around and flicked the wall switch that turned on the overhead lights. I had to admire the man’s reflexes.

  Although the magnificent TURD building was sparkling new, Memo’s spacious office somehow looked seedy. There wasn’t enough furniture for the size of it: only a government-issue steel desk with a swivel chair, a half-empty bookcase, and this slightly wobbly little conference table with six chairs that didn’t match. The walls and floors were bare and there was a distinct echo when anyone spoke or even walked across the room. The only window had vertical slats instead of a curtain, and it looked out on a parking building. The only decoration on the walls was Memo’s doctoral degree, purchased from some obscure “distance learning” school in Mississippi.

  Driver fixed Memo with his steely gaze across the conference table. “Well, what do you think of it?” he asked subtly.

  Memo pursed his lips. He was jowly fat, completely bald, wore glasses and a rumpled gray suit.

  “I don’t know,” he said firmly. “It sounds . . . unusual . . . “

  Dr. Pencilbeam was sitting back in his chair and smiling benignly. His PhD had been earned in the 1970s, when newly-graduated physicists were driving taxicabs on what they glumly called “Nixon fellowships.” He was very thin, fragile looking, with the long skinny limbs of a preying mantis.

  Pencilbeam dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out an electronic game. Reformed smoker, I thought. He needs something to do with his hands.

  “It certainly looks interesting,” he said in a scratchy voice while his game softly beeped and booped. “I imagine it’s technically achievable . . . and lots of fun.”

  Memo snorted. “We’re not here to have fun.”

  Keene leaned across the table and fixed Memo with his best here’s something from behind the scenes expression. “Do you realize how the White House would react to a sensible program for a supersonic transport? With the Concorde gone, you could put this country into the forefront of air transportation again.”

  “H’mm,” said Memo. “But . . . “

  “Think of the jobs this program can create. The President is desperate to improve the employment figures.”

  “I suppose so . . . “

  “National prestige,” Keene intoned knowingly. “Aerospace employment . . . balance of payments . . . gold outflow . . . the President would be terrifically impressed with you.”

  “H’mm,” Memo repeated. “I see . . . “

  I could see where the real action was, so I wangled myself an assignment to the company’s Washington office as Keene’s special assistant for the SSZ proposal. That’s when I started learning what money and clout—and the power of influence—are all about.

  As the months rolled along, we gave lots of briefings and attended lots of cocktail parties. I knew we were on the right track when no less than Roger K. Memo invited me to accompany him to one of the swankiest parties of the season. Apparently he thought that since I was from Anson’s home office in Phoenix I must be an engineer and not just another salesman.

  The party was in full swing by the time Keene and I arrived. It was nearly impossible to hear your own voice in the swirling babble of chatter and clinking glassware. In the middle of the sumptuous living room the Vice President was demonstrating his golf swing. Several Cabinet wives were chatting in the dining room. Out in the foyer, three Senators were comparing fact-finding tours they were arranging for themselves to the Riviera, Bermuda, and American Samoa, respectively.

  Memo never drank anything stronger than ginger ale, and I followed his example. We stood in the doorway between the foyer and the living room, hearing snatches of conversation among the three junketing Senators. When the trio broke up, Memo intercepted Senator Goodyear (R., Ohio) as he headed toward the bar.

  “Hello, Senator!” Memo shouted heartily. It was the only way to be heard over the party noise.

  “Ah . . . hello.” Senator Goodyear obviously thought that he was supposed to know Memo, and just as obviously couldn’t recall his name, rank, or influence rating.

  Goodyear was more than six feet tall, and towered over Memo’s paunchy figure. Together they shouldered their way through the crowd around the bar, with me trailing them like a rowboat being towed behind a yacht. Goodyear ordered bourbon on the rocks, and therefore so did Memo. But he merely held onto his glass while the Senator immediately began to gulp at his drink.

  A statuesque blonde in a spectacular gown sauntered past us. The Senator’s eyes tracked her like a battleship’s range finder following a moving target.

  “I hear you’re going to Samoa,” Memo shouted as they edged away from the bar, following the blonde.

  “Eh . . . yes,” the Senator answered cautiously, in a tone he usually reserved for news reporters.

  “Beautiful part of the world,” Memo shouted.

  The blonde slipped an arm around the waist of one of the young, long-haired men and they disappeared into another room. Goodyear turned his attention back to his drink.

  “I said,” Memo repeated, standing on tiptoes, “that Samoa is a beautiful place.”

  Nodding, Goodyear replied, “I’m going to investigate ecological conditions there . . . my committee is considering legislation on ecology, you know.”

  “Of course. Of course. You’ve got to see things firsthand if you’re going to enact meaningful legislation.”

  Slightly less guardedly, Goodyear said, “Exactly.”

  “It’s a long way off, though,” Memo said.

  “Twelve hours from LAX.”

  “I hope you won’t be stuck in economy class. They really squeeze the seats in there.”

  “No, no,” said the Senator. “First class all the way.”

  At the taxpayers’ expense, I thought.

  “Still,” Memo sympathized, “It must take considerable dedication to undergo such a long trip.”

  “Well, you know, when you’re in public service you can’t think of your own comforts.”

  “Yes, of course. Too bad the SST isn’t flying anymore. It could have cut your travel time in half. That would give you more time to stay in Samoa . . . investigating conditions there.”

  The hearing room in the Capitol was jammed with reporters and camera crews. Senator Goodyear sat in the center of the long front table, as befitted the committee chairman. I was in the last row of spectators, as befitted the newly-promoted junior Washington representative of Anson Aerospace Corp. I was following the industry’s routine procedure and riding the SSZ program up the corporate ladder.

  All through the hot summer morning the committee had listened to witnesses: my former boss John Driver, Roger K. Memo, Alonzo Pencilbeam and many others. The concept of the supersonic zeppelin unfolded before the news media and started to take on definite solidity in the rococo-trimmed hearing chamber.

  Senator Goodyear sat there solemnly all morning, listening to the carefully rehearsed testimony and sneaking peeks at the greenery outside the big sunny window. Whenever he remembered the TV cameras he sat up straighter and tried to look lean and tough. I’d been told he had a drawer full of old Clint Eastwood flicks in his Ohio home.

  Now it was his turn to summarize what the witnesses had told the committee. He looked straight into the bank of cameras, trying to come on strong and determined, like a high plains drifter.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, immediately antagonizing the women in the room, “I believe that what we have heard here today can mark the beginning of a new program th
at will revitalize the American aerospace industry and put our great nation back in the forefront of international commerce—”

  One of the younger Senators at the far end of the table, a woman, interrupted:

  “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, but my earlier question about pollution was never addressed. Won’t the SSZ use the same kind of jet engines that the Concorde used? And won’t they cause just as much pollution?”

  Goodyear glowered at the junior member’s impudence, but controlled his temper well enough to say only, “Em . . . Dr. Pencilbeam, would you care to comment on that question?”

  Half-dozing at one of the front benches, Pencilbeam looked startled at the mention of his name. Then he got to his feet like a carpenter’s ruler unfolding, went to the witness table, sat down and hunched his bony frame around the microphone there.

  “The pollution from the Concorde was so minimal that it had no measurable effect on the stratosphere. The early claims that a fleet of SSTs would create a permanent cloud deck over the northern hemisphere and completely destroy the ozone layer were never substantiated.”

  “But there were only a half-dozen Concordes flying,” said the junior Senator. “If we build a whole fleet of SSZs—”

  Before she could go any farther Goodyear fairly shouted into his microphone, “Rest assured that we are well aware of the possible pollution problem.” He popped his P’s like artillery bursts. “More importantly, the American aerospace industry is suffering, employment is in the doldrums, and our economy is slumping. The SSZ will provide jobs and boost the economy. Our engineers will, I assure you, find ways to deal with any and every pollution problem that may be associated with the SSZ.”

  I had figured the somebody, sooner or later, would raise the question of pollution. The engineers back in Phoenix wanted to look into the possibilities of using hydrogen fuel for the SSZ’s jet engines, but I figured that just the mention of hydrogen would make people think of the old Hindenberg, and that would scuttle the program right there and then. So we went with ordinary turbojet engines that burned ordinary jet fuel.