Like I said, we filled in the time. All of it, however busy it sounds, took place on Key West time—that is, in dreamy slow motion—and we rarely felt stressed. By day we worked at the details of our plan, and by night we drank and laughed.
And then all of a sudden I blinked, and it was early evening on August 7, and I was standing on a high octagonal platform telling outrageous lies to a man with a heart of gold, with the fate of the universe, aka my daughter Erin, strapped to my back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Big Bird
“Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.”
—J. Danforth Quayle
USING THEIR NASA
connections and a pack of lies so outrageous that I will not recount them here—both because I am ashamed of them and because who knows? I might need to use them again someday—Jim Omar and Shorty Steinitz had managed to pull enough strings to get me certified as a bona fide VIP visitor to the Kennedy Space Center, under a name and identity I think I will keep similarly obscure. A VIP of the highest possible civilian clout, in fact, entitled to get up close and personal with a multimillion-dollar spacecraft the night before its classified launch.
There it was, only a few hundred feet away, towering above us, larger than life and twice as natural: an honest-to-God Space Shuttle. Columbia she was, nearly ready for her eighth flight. I was standing on Pad 39-B, at the base of the immense Fixed Service Structure, a place I’d yearned to see close up for decades, had only a few months earlier been thrilled to death to see from two miles away. I should have been happy as a pig in Congress.
But I was too conflicted to fully appreciate it. The man who had been conned into vouching for me, whose identity I will also suppress, stood beside me on my right and pointed out features of particular interest to me, smiling in a way so benignly avuncular that I felt like a Commie spy. On my left was the guy from NASA Public Affairs, who despite his professional smile was obviously watching me like a hawk, afraid I’d do something incredibly unauthorized and stupid. Which I planned to do. I could also see at least four armed men who, if they ever figured out my true intentions, might very well shoot me, at least in the legs.
Also, it was very damn windy up there, four or five stories above the ground, and I was distracted by the unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation of cool breezes on my chin and upper lip and ears and the back of my neck. It had been decided by a committee of which I was not a member that my chances of passing as a VIP would be much higher if I lost the beard and long hair. It was the first time I’d had my bare face hanging out in over a quarter of a century, and it didn’t help a bit that the first time Zoey had seen it, she had laughed for a solid five minutes. I was going to get her for that, someday.
Also, I was distracted by the weight strapped to my back. All two-year-olds weigh more than you’d think they would—and since Erin was currently pretending to be sound asleep, all of it was dead weight. Not the phrase I wanted recurring in my mind, just then.
And Erin was not the last of my distractions—for while I was listening to my host tell me things I really wished I could spare the attention to follow, I was also listening to two other people he could not hear, only one of whom was there. I had a magic Tesla receiver in each ear, both cunningly disguised to look like particularly repulsive ear hairs. The left one brought me the faint voice of Nikola Tesla, who was then sitting in a schoolbus out on I-95, parked in the breakdown lane. The right fed me the amplified subvocalizations of Erin. Anything I subvocalized was picked up and broadcast to both of them by a Tesla transmitter on my throat, cunningly disguised to look like a shaving cut you wouldn’t want to look at for very long.
“…sound pressure at liftoff is so incredibly horrendous,” my host was saying, “it’d tear apart both the Shuttle and the pad if it weren’t muffled by that.”
Obediently, I looked where he was pointing—straight ahead past the Shuttle, at the 290-foot-tall water tank that would drop 300,000 gallons of sound-absorbing water under the Shuttle at the moment all hell broke loose tomorrow morning.
Even excluding the mighty spaceship itself, it was by no means the most impressive artifact visible on that platform. The Fixed Service Structure, at whose base we were standing, was taller (347 feet tall with the lightning mast), and the complex Rotating Service Structure that hinged on it, while less than 200 feet tall, was infinitely more complex and interesting than what was, when you came down to it, just an overgrown pull-chain toilet. And to either side of it I could see what, if you allowed yourself to think of the Shuttle as a phallic symbol, appeared to be its shrunken testes—large ball-shaped tanks at the northeast and northwest corners of the pad. If testicles they were, they were definitely of the brass monkey variety. Each was basically a big thermos bottle: the one on the left held almost a million gallons of liquid oxygen at about 300 degrees below zero, and the one on the right kept nearly as much liquid hydrogen at better than 400 below zero—between them, the hypergolic fuel for Columbia’s huge external tank.
The whole preceding paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with this story—except to illustrate my predicament. I was in a place that was just entirely too damned interesting. Everywhere I looked was something that tugged—no, yanked—at my attention. It was a rotten place in which to sustain an elaborate deception.
“Well,” I said, “that’s the way I leave a lot of places myself.”
My host looked puzzled.
“Baffled,” I explained. Come on, I added subvocally, aren’t you guys ready yet?
My host grinned. The NASA PR guy did not. There are PR guys with senses of humor, but working for NASA generally cures them.
Almost, Tesla reported in my left ear.
Daddy, that was awful, Erin murmured in my right.
Thank you, honey. “Can we go over to the far side and look over the drop-off?” I asked aloud.
The PR guy clenched his teeth, and my host looked sad. “I’m sorry.”
“Too dangerous?” I asked. Let’s go, let’s go!
“A matter of timing,” my host explained. “In about fifteen minutes they start putting the payload aboard—and it’s classified, I’m afraid, so they really don’t like civilians standing around rubbernecking. And as soon as that’s done they start loading up the external tank with the hypergolics: trust me, you don’t want to be around then.” Ready! Tesla said.
“I suppose not,” I agreed. Are you ready, Erin?
Ready, Pop!
Okay: phase one on “three,” phase two on “zero,” just like we rehearsed it. Everybody synch on me. “I’ve already imposed a lot,” I said to the flack, handing him my camera, “but could I ask you for one more?”
He sighed, affixed his smile, and took the camera with every appearance of delight. “No problem at all.” I used the posing dance that ensued to cover my subvocal countdown.
Here we go! Erin and Tesla chanted along with me: Number five jet fire; number four jet fire; number three—
“Smile!”
—Nikola Tesla Transited a large heavy wrench to a point in space just to the east of us, and about a hundred feet up in the air—
—jet fire; number two jet fire; number one—
KLANG!
“Jesus!” cried the PR guy, my host, and two of the armed men, and they all spun as one toward the sound, the PR guy dropping my camera to do so.
—jet fire, GO!
Erin teleported herself about 160 feet, almost straight up. In the very instant her weight left my back, most of it was replaced—by the lifelike dummy Erin that Tesla teleported into the backpack. That pack was empty for perhaps a quarter of a second or less…and nobody was looking in that direction. It was probably all over by the time my camera finished smashing and my shoulder muscles finished flinching.
I’m in! Erin reported triumphantly.
Thank God, Tesla and I both said. I was so keyed up I said it aloud instead of subvocalizing, but fortunately nobody around me seemed to hear the first s
yllable.
My companions converged cursing on the wrench, which was indeed the right size, kind, and type to belong there—was in fact an authentic NASA utensil, Transited from storage by Tesla. Then they took turns glancing up at God’s Erector Set, the FSS towering above us, to try and determine what part of it the wrench had fallen from. There was nobody in the right position up there now, but eventually some poor soul was going to catch hell he didn’t deserve for leaving tools unstowed, and I’d have felt sorry about that if I hadn’t been distracted by overwhelming relief that my baby girl had not just killed herself (and incidentally destroyed history) Transiting into some solid object aboard the Columbia.
How’s it look? I asked as the people I was with babbled at one another.
Like a coal cellar at midnight, she said. Let me get this flashlight on…there. Much better. Now it looks like the inside of a black box.
How was your placement? Tesla asked.
Perfect, Uncle Nikky. Absolutely nominal. I’m gonna get my stuff now.
Be careful, baby. Take your time. There’s no—
It’s done, Daddy. No sweat. I told you you were a worrywart. She had Transited her gear and provisions from Tesla’s bus into two adjoining lockers…again, without causing an explosion.
Thank you for indulging my paranoia, Pumpkin. Ready to go now?
Yep.
We were done, now. Rehearsal successful. She’d confirmed her bearing on the target, established to my satisfaction that she could reach it safely and undetected. There was no further exploring she could do up there now: workers would be wandering unpredictably in and out of the orbiter all night long. Now we would go back to the bus and get some sleep, get ready to do it again tomorrow morning, just before liftoff.
The PR guy apologized, both for almost getting my skull caved in and for breaking my camera. I waved away both apologies. “Serves me right for standing under anything this big without a hard hat,” I told him.
Okay, everything’s cool, Erin said. I just sent all the gear back to the bus, Daddy. Get ready, both of you: I’m coming back myself now, on zero this time…in…five Mississippi, four Mississippi—
“Nice of you to take it that way,” the flack said gratefully. “But I insist on replacing the camera.”
—three Mississippi, two Mississippi—
“Very we—”
KLANG!
Another fucking wrench hit the deck, no more than three feet from the first impact site. Since I wasn’t expecting this one, I jumped like everyone else—and felt horror flood through me.
—one Mississippi, NOW
With a convulsive effort, I did my very best to return to precisely the position I’d been standing in—and felt Erin replace her doppel. She was off by no more than half an inch. The relief—as much as the lurching jolt—nearly stopped my heart.
Suddenly I had no sympathy at all for the poor bastard who was going to catch hell for sloppy tool discipline.
My host interrupted the PR guy’s continued apologies, twinkling his eyes to alert me that a punchline was coming. “Well,” he said, “try to think of these wrenches as, uh…” He paused for effect. “…hail: Columbia.”
I knew I would find the remark funny later, and pretended to now, but I was busy trying to keep Nikky, tell the Lucky Duck I’m gonna kick his ass when I see him! down to a subvocal level. “The hail you say,” I riposted feebly.
What just happened, Daddy?
Fate decided to throw in a monkey wrench, honey. Not ours: a real fuckup, this time. Are you okay?
Yeah, fine—but I think that should have woken me up. She lifted her head, kicked her arms and legs, and began to wail. I found it even more unsettling than any other parent would have—for it was only the second time in her life that I’d ever heard Erin cry like a baby, the first being during her birth.
Misery inspired me. “He’s from Barcelona, you know,” I told my host.
He recognized the Fawlty Towers catchphrase, but was still puzzled. “Who is?”
I pointed upward. “The Spaniard in the works.” There: honor was satisfied.
That does it, Erin subvocalized—no small trick while sobbing—get me out of here, Daddy, or I’m Transiting out.
You big lug, Tesla couldn’t resist adding.
I made my excuses and got out of there as quickly and gracefully as I could. And that’s the story of my wrenching experience on Pad 39-B.
The next morning, August 8, at 8:35 A.M., I was in Tesla’s schoolbus, parked by the side of I-95 with hundreds of other vehicles. Also present were Zoey, Omar, Tesla, Doc Webster, Fast Eddie, the Lucky Duck for luck, and of course Erin. My hair was a different color and styled differently, and the ID I carried bore a false name. And I probably didn’t resemble me a whole lot in temperament, either. I was as nervous as a man whose baby daughter is about to stow away on a spacecraft. One that exploded only four flights earlier. I wanted, very badly, to give her some sort of sage advice—but was hampered by the fact that I couldn’t think of any advice that didn’t sound insulting, even to me.
Zoey of course had the same problem. Maybe worse, for all I know or can know. In her case it had the effect of making her outwardly very quiet and calm-appearing. Me, I was working hard to suppress my sudden resemblance to a jumping bean. Part of a parent’s job is to teach his kid how to deal with fear, right? Now if only someone would explain it to me…
Doc Webster, God bless his heart, sensed and understood the dynamic, and filled in the silence with a steady stream of harmless blather, designed to give us all something benign to think about. He was clever and witty and if you held a gun to my head now I could not tell you a single goddam thing that he said.
Finally, Omar lifted one headphone away from his ear and reported, “T minus two minutes thirty seconds. They just took the beanie off the carrot. All aboard.”
The three of us exchanged one of those glances that seems to go on for a million years. Erin was the only one smiling.
Zoey swallowed, hard. “Have a nice time on the spaceship, honey,” she said lightly.
“Break a law of physics,” I agreed. But even I heard my voice quiver on the last word.
Erin was in her mother’s embrace so quickly she almost seemed to Transit there, and a moment later she was hugging me too. I put everything I had into returning it. She gave me a wet smooch and backed away.
“I love you guys,” she said. Then she took her place between her two piles of gear, placing her feet squarely on the X duct-taped on the floor. “Don’t worry, okay?”
The luggage vanished with a barely audible popping sound.
“I’ll be fine.”
And Erin was gone too.
Two minutes later, they lit the candle over there, and 6.6 seconds later, Brewster Shaw, Richard Richards, James Adamson, David Leestma, Mark Brown, and Erin Stonebender left town—and planet—together. The noise rocked the bus. We were much farther away than we’d been for the last launch, but it was still one helluva sight.
This time we had more riding on it.
I guess we were the first people in history who ever screamed “Go, baby, go!” during a space launch, and were punning.
Omar took off his headphones and put the sound on speakers so we could all follow the launch.
“Roll program initiated.”
“Columbia, go at throttle up.”
“Roger, go at throttle up.”
“Houston, we have booster sep.”
“Roger, Columbia, we show a clean sep down here.”
WHEEEEEE, Erin sang, on a very different circuit.
“Columbia, Houston here, two engine Ben Guerrir.” That meant the Shuttle now had enough altitude and speed to make it to Morocco even if one engine failed.
“Columbia, Houston. Negative return.” It was no longer possible for Commander Shaw to turn around and head back for Kennedy if he took a notion to. Four more minutes to orbit.
God, you guys—this is so fun! Zoey and I looked at each other an
d smiled in spite of ourselves.
“Columbia, Houston, single-engine ATO.” They were now high enough to make orbit even if two of the three engines were to fail. I began to breathe a little easier.
Time didn’t pass; it tailgated. Finally:
“Houston, Columbia. We have MECO.”
“Roger that, Columbia. We show a very slightly late cutoff. Eight minutes and forty seconds.”
They were in orbit. And nobody had figured out why the computers had decided they needed to keep the engines on a few seconds longer than predicted to get them there. Erin’s extra mass was buried away somewhere in a huge string of zeros and ones that nobody would examine closely for some time to come or, probably, believe when they did.
The bus rang with applause.
Nobody outside noticed, of course. They had all started their engines and driven away the moment the Shuttle was too high to see with the naked eye, just like the last time.
Oh, golly, Erin reported, zero gravity is WAY cool…
I could fill the next several pages with a lot of stuff I subsequently learned from my daughter. What five days in orbit is like, for one thing…but you can find that sort of thing in a lot of other places. What life as a stowaway is like…but that, too, has been amply recorded elsewhere. The crew rarely ventured down to the middeck, and never did so without announcing their intention to Houston first; Erin had no trouble at all remaining out of sight, and didn’t have to spend too much time holed up in that damned locker. The biggest problem she had was that she couldn’t use the zero-gee toilet facilities without being noticed. Things did get a little ugly in that department, but after reflection I don’t think I’ll be any more specific—except to note that, having completed toilet training only a short time earlier, Erin was much less squeamish about such matters than a grown-up in her undignified position might have been. And, of course, Transiting helped immensely: the problem was…uh…Transient.
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