by Ben Bova
Big public-relations problem, he said to himself. People remember whenever a rocket blows up. Sticks in their minds. They’ll be scared to fly a rocket.
Then he thought, but why should it have to take off like a rocket? Why not a jet plane that carries the bird piggyback up to high altitude, then the bird lights its rocket engine and goes off like a bat out of hell. That’s what Branson’s doing with his suborbital flights. Tourists pay good money for a few minutes of feeling weightless, as if they were actually in space.
As he rode his helicopter from Hobby Airport to his office, the city below reminded him of an inhumanly busy ants’ nest, with cars scurrying madly along the throughways. He pulled out his handheld and called Linda.
“Get Egan to meet me in my office before the day’s out,” he said.
Her face in the phone’s miniature screen looked only mildly surprised. “Egan is in California, meeting with the SpaceX people. Besides, it’s almost five o’clock.”
“You don’t expect to leave at quitting time, do you?”
“Of course not.” With a rueful shake of her head.
“Set up a phone link with him for me. I’ll be in the office . . .” he glanced at the clock readout on the handheld, “. . . in ten, twelve minutes.”
“Right. Oh, Mr. Ornsteen wants to see you as soon as you get in. He says it’s urgent.”
“Sid?” The corporation’s treasurer never brought good news, Thrasher thought. “Urgent, huh?”
“He seemed upset.”
“He’s always upset. The man’s a walking ulcer.”
“Shall I tell him to meet you in your office?”
Nodding reluctantly, Thrasher replied, “After I’ve talked with Egan.”
Linda kept a corner of her desktop screen focused on the view from the camera at the helipad, up on the roof. The instant her boss’ chopper touched down, she went to the minifridge built into the cabinets lining the back wall of the anteroom and poured a chilled mug of ginger beer. She sniffed at the bubbling brew, wondering why Thrasher liked it so much. It’s not alcoholic, she knew. It’s sort of like ginger ale, only stronger.
Thrasher came breezing through the corridor door, briefcase slung over a shoulder of his rumpled sports coat, one hand reaching for the mug.
“Egan is standing by in California,” she said.
“Good.”
“And Ornsteen’s on his way up.”
“Oy.”
Thrasher disappeared into his office. Linda returned to her desk and saw his phone line turn on. She clipped on her Bluetooth earset and listened in for a few moments. Tech talk, about flying rockets from Houston to California. She quietly cut her connection and put the earset back in her top desk drawer as Sidney P. Ornsteen stepped in, looking more worried than usual.
The corporate treasurer was balding and rail thin, anxiety thin. Linda thought he always looked as if he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, although Thrasher insisted that Ornsteen didn’t get nervous breakdowns, he gave them to others. He wore a three-piece suit, dark as an undertaker’s, and an expensive-looking patterned blue tie. He might be good-looking, she thought, if he’d only relax and smile once in a while.
Nodding toward Thrasher’s closed door, Ornsteen asked, “He’s in?”
Linda replied, “He’s on a phone call, Mr. Ornsteen. He’ll be with you in a moment or two. Can I get you something? Coffee? Soda?”
Ornsteen shook his head and began pacing back and forth in front of Linda’s desk.
“Who’s he talking to?”
“Egan.”
“The engineering guy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Probably pissing more money down a rathole,” Ornsteen muttered. Then he looked stricken. “Sorry about the language, Ms. Ursina.”
Linda smiled minimally.
“How long—”
Thrasher’s voice came over the intercom. “Is Super Sid there yet?”
“He’s right here,” Linda cooed.
“Good. Send him in.”
Linda started to get up from her desk, but Ornsteen didn’t wait to be ushered. He bolted to the door and opened it himself.
Thrasher closed his eyes briefly as his treasurer stalked into his office. Ornsteen looked more worked up than usual, he saw. Can’t be good news.
“Hello, Sid. Have a seat.”
Ornsteen sat on the front three inches of the nearest armchair.
Before the treasurer could say anything, Thrasher asked, “What’s happening, Sid? You look unsettled.”
“Somebody’s making a run at the corporation’s stock,” Ornsteen announced.
“A run?”
“Buying up a lot of shares.”
“How many?”
The treasurer reached into his jacket and pulled out his smartphone. Thrasher noticed his left eye twitched as he tapped at the phone’s screen.
“Eleven percent, as of close of business this afternoon.”
Thrasher gave out a low whistle and swiveled his desk chair slowly back and forth, thinking fast. He mused, “I left Jenghis Kahn’s office just about one p.m., New York time . . .”
“The push started yesterday,” Ornsteen said. “It just became noticeable this afternoon.”
“His brother Charlie?”
“You think?”
“I popped the Mars idea to Charlie last week. He didn’t seem too wild about it, but maybe he was conning me.”
“Why would he want a chunk of our stock?” Ornsteen wondered. “All he’s doing is driving up the price.”
“Eleven percent?”
“And counting.”
“Maybe he wants to buy his way onto our board,” Thrasher guessed.
“Why would he want to do that?”
“To block my Mars program.”
Ornsteen shook his head. “The smart thing to do would be to wait until the value of our shares drops and then scoop ‘em up.”
“Why would our stock’s value drop?”
The treasurer closed his eyes and massaged his brows. Then he said, “Because, Art, once you start pumping money into your Mars thing our net is going to sink like a lead balloon.”
“Maybe,” Thrasher admitted. “For a while.”
“It doesn’t make sense to buy now,” Ornsteen insisted.
“Any way of finding out who it is?”
“Come on, Art,” Orsteen replied sourly. “He must be using dummies. Just what you’d do if you wanted to move in on a company.”
“H’mm.”
“I can ask around on the Street, see if anybody knows anything.”
“You do that, Sid. This could be serious.”
“You’re telling me?”
Thrasher watched his treasurer get up from the chair and walk stiffly to his office door. Once Ornsteen was gone, he leaned back in his desk chair and tried to make sense of what was happening.
Somebody’s trying to buy his way onto my board of directors, he thought. Hell, this might be the first step in an attempt to weasel me out of my own company!
I’ve got to find out who it is. And what he’s after.
7
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Two weeks later, Thrasher sat in the office of his corporation’s chief Washington representative, waiting for the man to return from a conference on Capitol Hill. Thrasher Digital’s D.C. office was distinctly more sumptuous than the corporate headquarters in Houston. It didn’t pay to look seedy in Washington; elegant décor bespoke of money and power. It was a language that political decision-makers understood instinctively.
Thrasher glanced at his wristwatch. After eleven o’clock already. Impatiently, he got to his feet and went to the window. Traffic was heavy down on K Street: cars, taxis, buses inching along in a sluggish clot. Even the sidewalks were jammed with well-dressed pedestrians.
Most of them are employees of the goddamned government, Thrasher thought. They all spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to spend my tax money.
The office door
banged open and in breezed Reynold R. Reynolds.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Artie,” he said, grabbing Thrasher’s hand in a big, meaty paw, then hurrying to his broad, uncluttered desk. “Big pow-wow with Senator Nicholson.”
Widely known as “R Cubed,” Reynolds was a large man, tall and portly, who always wore a crafty expression on his fleshy face, a sort of disdainful smirk that seemed to say, “I know more about the ins-and-outs of this town than you do.”
Thrasher knew that R Cubed was very knowledgeable, but he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know, for example, that someone was trying to buy his way into Thrasher Digital’s board of directors. And Thrasher had no intention of telling him about the subtle raid his stock was suffering. One word to Reynolds and the news would be all over Washington, and then spread like a tsunami across the business world. For the way Reynolds maintained his reputation for knowing things was by telling everyone almost everything he knew. Almost.
“So what’s the chairman of the Senate appropriations committee have to say for himself?” Thrasher asked, sitting himself in front of the desk.
Reynolds took a pipe from the rack on his desk and stuck it in his mouth, unlit. He knit his brow, pursed his lips, and stroked his double chin. “The usual. The Democrats don’t care a rat’s ass about space and the Republicans are only interested because the Democrats aren’t.”
“The next NASA budget?”
“It’ll grow, but only by the inflation index. One percent, maybe a little more.”
“Nothing about Mars.”
Reynolds huffed. “Hell, they even canceled the latest unmanned rover project. NASA’s not going any farther than the International Space Station, not for the life of this administration. And then some.”
“What about that big telescope they want to put into space?” Thrasher asked.
“Barely squeaked through the budget review. It’s years late and a couple billion over budget, but it’s got major contractors in so many different states that the Congress has to keep it on life-support.”
“They’re not worried about the Chinese?”
Another huff. “Chairman of the Senate committee on commerce, science, and transportation—that’s where NASA’s pigeonholed in the Senate’s pecking order, in with airline safety and fisheries—anyway, the committee chairman told me, ‘If the Commies want to put a man on the Moon, I say, good luck to them.’”
Thrasher grumbled, “Idiot.”
“Smart politician,” Reynolds corrected. “There’s no political push for space. No bloc of votes that can toss a politician out of office if he doesn’t vote for bigger space appropriations.”
“What about those grassroots organizations? The Planetary Society? The National Space whatever?”
“Small and powerless. Staff people up on the Hill regard them as a bunch of kooks.”
“I’m supposed to speak at their international meeting in a couple of months.”
Reynolds shrugged. “Might do you more harm than good.”
Thrasher nodded. “Maybe.”
Hunching forward in his oversized desk chair, Reynolds said, “Look: NASA’s being hamstrung. There’s no political push for space.”
“But companies like Boeing, Orbital Science, SpaceX—they’re doing business—”
“Ferrying people and cargo up the ISS and back,” Reynolds interrupted. “Running a bus line to low Earth orbit. At prices the government sets. Hell, Virgin Galactic doesn’t even go that far, they just sell you a ride up about a hundred miles and then you come right back down again.”
“People pay good money for that ride.”
“Piffle. Compared to what you’re trying to do, it’s small change. Nobody in this town has any interest in trying to get the government back into space in a major way.”
Thrasher sunk his head. But he was thinking, Good. Good. Keep the goddamned government out of it.
“How good are you at snooping?” Thrasher asked.
Patti Fabrizio looked up from her champagne cocktail. “Me? Snooping?” A sly smile curved her thin lips.
The two of them were sitting in a corner of the Cosmos Club’s bar, as far from the entrance as they could get. The darkly paneled room was designed to allow people to hold private conversations, safe from prying eyes and ears.
Thrasher had first met Patricia Fabrizio at an embassy party, so long ago that he had still been married to his first wife at the time. Patti had been a reporter for Fox News back in those days, and a good one. She was regally tall, a bit over six feet, and slim as a marathon runner—which she had been in her college days. Born to old Virginia money, she had gone into TV news when she fell in love with Daniel Fabrizio, who taught journalism at the university she attended. Their marriage endured until Danny died in a train wreck just outside of the District of Columbia. She had never remarried, but she stayed with news reporting. She found that she enjoyed prying secrets out of politicians.
Thrasher was having a drink with her in the Cosmos Club bar before flying back to Houston.
Leaning so close that their heads almost touched, he confided, “Somebody’s making a run at my stock. Started a couple of weeks ago and whoever it is is still nibbling away.”
She grew serious. “How do you know it’s a raid? Maybe your stock looks attractive.”
With a shake of his head, Thrasher said, “No more attractive than it was a month ago. And the word’s out on the Street that I’m going to be dumping a lot of the corporation’s assets into the Mars program—”
“What Mars program?”
Nearly two hours later, Patti knew almost as much about the workings of Thrasher Digital as Thrasher himself did. The bar had emptied of its cocktail-hour customers and was slowly filling up again with more serious drinkers. An aging, pot-bellied Senator towed a low-cut blonde up to the bar, where they sat on display, in full view of everyone.
Patti sniffed at the man’s arrogance, then turned back to Thrasher. “So you think somebody’s trying to buy his way onto your board?”
Thrasher nodded.
She fingered her nearly-empty glass. It was her third champagne cocktail, but the liquor didn’t seem to affect her at all.
“And then kick you out?” she continued.
“I own more stock than anybody else, but not an absolute majority. Whoever it is might be able to build up a coalition—”
“A cabal.”
“Whatever. They could bounce me out.”
“Or maybe,” she said, slowly, “maybe they want to acquire a healthy block of your shares, then dump them. Start a panic. Depress the price of your stock. Ruin your company.”
Thrasher felt appalled. “I never thought of that.”
“You’re too much in love with your company to think anybody could stoop so low.”
“But why? Why would anybody want to wreck the company?”
That sly smile returned. “You don’t have any enemies?”
“Nobody who’s that sore at me. I think. Years ago, maybe, when I was just starting the company. But not now.” Again he added, “I think.”
“You haven’t stepped on any toes? Stolen a woman from somebody, maybe?”
“Me?” Thrasher was honestly surprised at the thought.
“I’ve heard stories about some of your lady friends,” Patti said. “In fact, why couldn’t the culprit be some woman you dumped?”
“I don’t dump women!”
“Hell hath no fury, you know.”
“Jeez, Patti. I’m asking you for help and all you’re doing is giving me heartburn.”
She laughed heartily. “All right, Artie, all right. I’ll poke around a little for you.”
“Discreetly,” he said, making a shushing motion with both hands. “Quietly.”
“Like a little mouse,” said Patti.
But Thrasher got a mental impression of a lean, hard-eyed cheetah stalking its prey.
8
INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI
Margaret Watkins spoke with
a leisurely southern drawl. Thrasher wondered whether it came naturally to her, or was an affectation.
She was approaching eighty, Thrasher knew, although she dressed in frilly little frocks designed for women half her age. And weight. She was what was once called “pleasingly plump,” short and round. Born to the founder of Watkins Brands, Inc., she had been an adorably pretty little girl when her father made his first few millions, and one of the nation’s most attractive debutantes when the old man died, leaving her a cool billion dollars in trust. Maggie turned out to have a good head for business, and now was one of the wealthiest women on Earth. But for each billion she gained, she also put on ten pounds. Or more.
She and Thrasher were wending their way slowly through the Truman Library, early in the evening, after the museum was closed to the general public. Through the long draperied windows Thrasher could see the sunset outside turning the sky flame red.
“So to what do I owe the honah of your visit?” Maggie asked, in her girlish southern accent.
She’s trying to sound like Scarlett O’Hara, Thrasher thought. Maybe I should try my Clark Gable impression on her.
Instead, he shrugged and answered in his normal voice, “I just realized it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other and decided to drop in on you. Hope you don’t mind.”
Maggie gave him a disbelieving look. “And your sudden yearnin’ to see me wouldn’t have anything at all to do with Mars, would it?”
With what he hoped was a boyish grin, Thrasher answered, “Mars? What have you heard about Mars?”
“That you’re sweet-talkin’ and arm-twistin’ and goin’ every which way to raise money for flying out to Mars.”
“You’re damned right I am,” Thrasher said, with some heat.
They started along a corridor lined with photographs from Truman’s career. Thrasher especially liked the one of Harry from the morning after election day, 1948. He was grinning from ear to ear as he held up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with its famously incorrect headline, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.
Now they stood at the entrance to the replica of President Truman’s Oval Office. As they stepped through, Thrasher realized with some bitterness that the present president hadn’t invited him to the White House. Not once.
