The Orion Protocol

by Gary Tigerman

  “This is the executive order authorizing continuing funding of space shield research and testing. The record enclosed represents decades of development and half a trillion dollars invested, give or take, each phase of publicly funded R & D supplemented with discretionary monies by presidential EO. The line for your initials has been flagged.”

  Noting all the previous presidents’ initials displayed in succession, the new Commander in Chief handled the documents like rare historical artifacts prepared for display at the Smithsonian. But he’d have bet his campaign debt that this record would never see the light of day.

  “I guess Star Wars didn’t just fade away when the Wall came down,” he said, leafing through the pages.

  “Fortunately not, sir.”

  Classified above top secret, the file in the President’s hands charted the progress of Project Orion from its Cold War roots as part of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. Star Wars, to its post-911 incarnation as a space-based laser weapons system adroitly repositioned as a shield against rogue terrorist ICBMs.

  “Ups the ante from a few missiles on the ground in Alaska, doesn’t it?”

  “The photon laser leapfrogs all other missile defense technology, sir.”

  The President nodded, his apprehensions intact: space-based weapons more than violated America’s post-ABM strategic defense agreements with Russia. And September 11 no longer provided a free pass for whatever the U.S. wanted in the name of national security.

  “So, what’s the damned caveat, Bob?”

  Winston presented the facts unadorned, like a nice neat hanging.

  “There’s a hard window for deployment, sir. We have twenty-one days.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We’re still looking for the johns around here.”

  “I understand, sir. But geomechanically, if we don’t deploy Orion within three weeks, NASA says we’ll have to wait a full year before we can try it again, which would be extremely problematic in terms of realpolitik.”

  For all the speeches at the UN pledging antiterror solidarity, unilateral deployment of uncodified American superweapons would be like throwing a flash grenade into the 3-D chess game of international relations.

  The wariness in the President’s demeanor edged toward anger.

  “Why wasn’t the transition team brought up to speed on this two months ago?”

  “Need-to-know, sir,” Winston recited the intelligence mantra. “New staff have not been vetted above top secret yet. And frankly, proof of design data was not as hard as it needed to be.”

  “Christ.” The President scowled, brooding behind the desk built for FDR.

  Winston squirmed almost imperceptibly before launching into the sell.

  “Mr. President, it is not the ideal circumstance. But I’m not exactly the Lone Ranger on this. Langley, Defense Intelligence, the Joint Chiefs, the FBI, key flag officers and National Security Council members, the feeling is very much across-the-board that we need this. And in any case, I’m afraid keeping our progress on Orion under wraps for another twelve months is less than realistic.”

  The President indicated the Orion file.

  “Hell, it’s been under wraps for thirty years . . .”

  “True enough, sir, but at this point, with major visible assets necessarily in place and so many partners, secrecy is extremely problematic. However, looking at Russia vis-à-vis NATO, plus the new oil and security agreements, now is probably the best possible opportunity—”

  “So, use it or lose it.” The President said, not sounding happy about it. Up on his feet now, he began prowling the blue carpet emblazoned with the same seal engraved on his letter opener. “Fuck the EU and Moscow and Beijing and Congress, too. Field it now and finesse it later. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Winston’s unbullied cool reflected his experience on the receiving end of presidential wrath.

  “Mr. President, all we’re saying is carpe diem. Place U.S. security interests foremost. The world acknowledges our legitimate right to self-defense and our motives are transparent, whatever diplomatic challenge that may present. I don’t mean to underestimate whatever State’s objections may be.”

  “Oh, you can be sure Secretary Wyman will object. You’ll be able to hear her objections in Maryland and Virginia.”

  Beth Wyman, the forty-five-year-old former California senator and newly minted Secretary of State, had been a formidable candidate during the presidential primaries and a vocal campaigner against the militarization of space. Her decision to withdraw from the race and throw her support, along with California’s huge cache of electoral votes, to the party’s ultimate nominee had been shrewdly timed. And assurances about the President’s go-slow position on national missile defense, not to mention the cabinet spot, had been hers for the asking.

  “I have every confidence in the Secretary’s ability, sir.”

  The President saw how Winston’s formal body language had an almost Boy Scout quality that was not an affectation. He noticed this along with the messenger-killing anger he could hear in his own voice, and consciously dialed it back a few clicks.

  “Shit,” he said, stretching his long torso and adopting a more confiding tone. “Just tell me, Bob. Is this thing going to work?”

  Winston relaxed a fraction.

  “Yes, sir. I also believe that deployment of the space shield could become the most enduring legacy of your presidency.”

  If the Commander in Chief thought it a little early in his administration to be invoking the L-word, Winston ignored any hint that he might be presuming.

  “Project Orion is an American technology triumph, sir. In one stroke, we can assure that America remains the strongest nation on Earth and the guarantor of world peace for the rest of the twenty-first century. It will be a defining achievement in leadership. People will start to feel safe again. And if we can successfully bring the developed world together under America’s enhanced security umbrella these first four years, sir, I’m absolutely confident the second four years will take care of itself.”

  The President thought it was a nice, if hyperbolic, little speech. Although Winston had said “America” three times in one paragraph.

  Feeling his morning appointments boxcarring in the outer office, he suppressed a bleak rebuttal concerning the flip side of Winston’s rosy scenario. Such bold, unilateral defense posturing could just as easily lead to geopolitical disaster: fueling firestorms of anti-U.S. reaction and international paranoia, inspiring more low-tech terror campaigns against the Great Satan and earning him an ignominious one-term presidency.

  Still, doing nothing was not an option.

  “All right,” he said, initialing the line marked potus on the executive order. “I want any and all options vis-à-vis Project Orion preserved during this twenty-one-day window, whatever that entails.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The President could see Winston’s natural mental acuity accelerate a few dozen megahertz, as if a pent-up tactical force of available clock speed had been given a call to arms.

  “However, I’m authorizing final testing only, within the bounds of our current international agreements.” He handed over the signed authority. “Deployment will be taken up separately after we see where we are. And tell the FBI to expedite those staff clearances, for Christ’s sake. I need my people.”

  “Yes, sir.” Winston’s face stiffened. The President read it as either a stomach cramp or suppressed disappointment. He cut to the chase.

  “You knew I wasn’t just going to cowboy-up and green-light this thing. That’s not what the People are paying me for.”

  His adviser smiled his patented thin smile, without showing any teeth.

  “I knew we had to begin the conversation, sir. I’m sorry that events are giving it more urgency than either of us would have liked.”

  Slipping the Project Orion file inside the Kevlar-lined case manacled to his wrist, Winston moved with almost mechanical precision. His long-limbed new boss leaned f
orward, resting his forearms on the desk.

  “Bob, I very much appreciated your willingness to stay on board. And I want a diversity of opinions around here, not a bunch of bobbing heads.”

  “I serve at the pleasure of the President.”

  Winston pronounced the phrase with all due deference. Yet something seemed vaguely withheld. Something the President did not fail to register before gifting Winston with his most level gaze.

  “What I mean to say is, however it worked around here before, this is my watch. And I need to know everything there is to know that might possibly bear on a decision like this. Everything.”

  The security adviser blinked: he had not anticipated this, not completely. But any emotional reaction he had to being semiblindsided was smoothly submerged. He stood up.

  “Mr. President, I’ll have a brief on your desk by end of day.”

  His face, posture, and handshake: each one now presented a crisp and perfectly unreadable blend of corporate and military can-do spirit. Winston then turned smartly on his heel and headed for the Masonic trompe l’oeil door.

  In the brief moment alone, before Mrs. Travis, the President’s longtime secretary, could leap to the task of getting him back on schedule, the inner radar screen of the most powerful elected leader in the world raised a small intuitive alarum.

  He found himself wondering if the carryover appointment of R. Cabot “Bob” Winston might not have been his first presidential mistake.

  Then the intercom buzzed and he decided it was too soon to tell.

  2

  NASA Space Camp/Houston, Texas

  “Now I’m gonna need a few volunteers.”

  Eager hands throughout the bleacher crowd of Space Camp kids shot up in the air as former Apollo 18 astronaut Augie Blake shielded his eyes from the overhead lights and peered out into the auditorium.

  “Colonel Blake! Colonel Blake!”

  The chorus of young voices called out to him as Augie quit the lectern and ambled down front swinging a shiny Halliburton briefcase. A hundred pairs of arms were straining to be chosen by the time he set the metal case down on a folding table and opened it up.

  “Senior Director of Astronaut Recruitment and Training” is what it said on his NASA business card, but some days he felt like just another full-of-shit military-industrial lobbyist trading on past triumphs to hustle the space program for a living. And some days maybe he was. But not today.

  Today, in his tailored NASA jumpsuit and baseball cap, he was Colonel Augie Blake, bona fide American Space Hero and the best living cheerleader for human exploration of the solar system on the face of the Earth. Today he was having fun.

  “Okay, four people.” Augie looked out among the open-faced ten- to twelve-year-olds, quickly choosing two girls and two boys. As the volunteers came up, he shook hands with each one, smiling into their upturned faces as he learned their names and handed each of them an object extracted from his foam-padded aluminum case.

  “Tasha, Stacy, Erik, and Josh are going to bring around four different samples. You’ve probably already guessed what kind of rocks these are . . . ”

  “Moon rocks!”

  A buzz of anticipation circled the room as Augie dispersed his new assistants, who carried the lunar rock samples like they were the Crown Jewels.

  “These specimens were brought back from the Moon by Commander Jake Deaver and me in 1973 on the Apollo 18 mission.”

  He watched the wonder in their faces as the kids tentatively reached out to touch the Moon rocks.

  “Touching is okay! Go on ahead.”

  Augie glanced at his watch. This was not the only stop on his itinerary. He had a group of movie execs expecting a VIP tour through the Johnson Space Center. And a rah-rah, closed-door speech after that for NASA employees only, followed by an interview with a gaggle of Chinese journalists at Houston/Hobby about the latest additions to the International Space Station and future science plans involving U.S. astronauts and China’s “taiko-nauts.” If he was lucky, he’d be heading back to Andrews Air Base and his home in Washington, D.C., by about midnight.

  “Okay, now, you notice how worn and smooth these Moon rocks are? Sort of like the rocks you find by a river or by the ocean, right? But river rock is worn smooth by water erosion. Are there any rivers or oceans on the Moon?”

  “No!” a volley of voices answered back.

  “That’s right. So, what else could make them smooth? What about wind erosion? Is there any wind on the Moon?”

  “No!”

  The space campers shouted it out, responding in unison now.

  “Whoa. You guys know your stuff, don’t you? So, no air, no atmosphere, no wind. In fact, you see that picture back there?” He turned and pointed upstage.

  On a screen behind him, a famous photo had been projected showing Colonel Augie Blake and Commander Jake Deaver standing proudly on the lunar surface, with an American flag between them and a tiny blue image of Earth reflected in each of their shiny gold visors.

  “See how that flag is sticking out, like a breeze is blowing it? Well, we had a real problem with a little folding aluminum-bar dealie that was supposed to hold the top part up. I mean, just getting that dumb flag to work was one pain in the butt, let me tell you.”

  Augie got the cheap laugh he expected: “He said butt!”

  “However, what makes these rocks smooth is something called cosmic rain. Tiny little grains of dust called micrometeorites are constantly raining down on the Moon from space at thousands of miles an hour, and this cosmic rain slowly wears down all the hills and rocks until everything is smooth as beach glass. All right, let’s give a hand to our volunteers.”

  Collecting the rocks as the kids applauded, Augie could feel that they were more at ease with him, more comfortable with the larger-than-life face in front of them, which they had recognized from video documentaries here at camp and from history books at school.

  He was familiar with people’s initial awkwardness around him. It was part of the mixed bag of being an American space hero: respect, celebration, opportunity, and social access, excruciatingly wrapped-to-go with painful public scrutiny, inhumanly high expectations, and fierce collegial jealousies, all finally amplifying an already larger-than-life into a rock and roll of alcoholism, substance abuse, and divorce.

  Wholesome now, even inspiring in the spotlight on this Space Camp stage, Colonel Augie Blake, the Last Man to Walk on the Moon, had been no exception. Lurching through his own fifteen-rounds-with-fame hell and its suburbs, he had survived; single, sober, and more often than not glad to be alive.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his blue-blazered NASA driver giving him the ten-minute high sign from the nearest exit. He grinned noncommittally and turned back to his audience.

  “Now, I did promise your counselors not to keep y’all too long.”

  “No! No!”

  The room erupted, shouting him down with a fired-up dose of unalloyed energy and enthusiasm which Augie thought of as his reward for every other Space Agency dog-and-pony show he had to slog through. And he was in no hurry for it to be over.

  “Okay, two more questions. What’s your name?”

  He pointed at a tall twelve-year-old girl with braces on her teeth and a NASA-logo’d T-shirt.

  “Melissa.”

  “Go ahead, Melissa.”

  “Um, Colonel Blake, I was wondering. Are we really going to send astronauts to Mars, and if we are, how soon?”

  “Great question. Yes, about the time you hit grad school we should be interviewing for the first Mars mission. In fact, we have an astronaut training facility at the South Pole because the environment in the Antarctic is the closest thing on Earth to what it’s like on Mars. Would you go to Mars, Melissa?”

  “Yes!” she said, blushing at her own intensity of feeling.

  “All right! Anybody else want to go?”

  Everybody, counselors included, raised their arms and cheered.

  “Well, I guess we won’t
be short on candidates. One more question.” Augie nodded to a stocky twelve-year-old boy showing a downy hint of what would soon enough become a mustache. “Yes, go ahead. What’s your name?”

  “Fernando.”

  “Yes, Fernando.”

  “I just wanted to know uh, since you were on the Moon and everything, did you see any, like, UFOs or anything up there?”

  Fernando sat down amid a wave of giggles, some of the space campers rolling their eyes as if it was so not cool. But Augie maintained eye contact with the boy and handled it as a straightforward question.

  “Well, Fernando, I have to say no, I didn’t see any extraterrestrials on the Moon. I wish I had.”

  There was a light laugh as Augie then addressed the larger group.

  “That doesn’t mean we might not have space-faring neighbors somewhere out there. Maybe some that are much older and far more technologically developed than we are. In fact, the odds are looking pretty good that we are not alone in space.”

  Augie heard the hush of their curiosity, both about what he was saying and at the sense of gravity with which he was saying it.

  “Think about it this way. Thanks to the Hubble Telescope, among other instruments, we now know there are sunlike stars throughout the Milky Way galaxy where we live. And across the universe there are billions of galaxies each filled with billions of stars. Now, if only one out of a million stars had planets like Earth, and only one out of every million of those Earth-like planets had intelligent life, that would still mean there are thousands of planets out there populated by intelligent beings like ourselves, just waiting to be known.”

  The Apollo alumnus paused to let that sink in and then continued.

  “The fact of this presents us, as a species, with a tremendous challenge. First, exploring our own neighborhood, our own solar system; taking up the search for life in whatever form we may find it on the other worlds nearest to Earth. And then, using everything we have learned from traveling in space and surviving in inhospitable places like the Moon and Mars, taking that knowledge and going further. Because ultimately, I think we as human beings have an even greater destiny to fulfill. I believe it’s our magnificent destiny that we take our place among all the other intelligent species in the universe which God has created. To know and to be known. ‘To add our light to the sum of light.’ And to do that, we must reach for the stars.”