Orbit

by John J. Nance

  “How?”

  “Before your dad married my daughter I had him thoroughly investigated, and I wanted every detail of that tragedy to make sure he had no culpability. Jerrod, she was trapped in a tangle of metal. There was nothing you could have done!”

  “I could have pulled her out of the window.”

  He sighs deeply, his eyes on Jerrod, considering whether to push on.

  “Okay, dammit…I’m going to show you a picture, Jerrod, if you truly want to see it. It’s gruesome as hell and it will probably do you more harm, so I beg you not to ask, but you’re an adult now. If you want to see it, I’ll show it to you, but it was taken after her body was burned beyond recognition. It shows clearly that she had been completely impaled on the steering column after the wheel broke off. Run through, Jerrod, all the way through to her backbone. Even if you’d had superhuman strength, all you would have been able to pull out was her upper torso.”

  “I…saw her look at me…her mouth moved…she was screaming…”

  The only grandfather he’s ever known moves to sit alongside him, putting a big arm around the boy and pulling him into a hug, hanging on as the tears finally flow.

  ABOARD INTREPID

  The so-called terminator—the line of demarcation between night and day—is crawling across the middle of the United States again, but Kip has to check his watch and think to realize that it’s been two days since he should have returned to Earth. He’s checked the oxygen and CO2 scrubber saturation tables twice now, and he figures he has two more days before breathing begins to get difficult. Maybe he should just depressurize the ship and finish the job, freeze drying himself and his dead pilot with the vacuum of deep space and eternal cold.

  Bill is about to become a problem. Kip knows it instinctively. A body in room temperature for two days has already gone through rigor mortis, and despite being sealed in plastic as well as Kip could manage, he fears that soon he’ll be inhaling the telltale odor of decomposition. Earlier, he stopped writing for a half hour to search out Bill’s pressure suit, wondering if perhaps putting him in it and sealing everything wouldn’t be the best course of action. But he’s convinced he’s waited too long; were he to open the sealed plastic now…

  Besides, he might decide to go for a spacewalk and just end it out there as his own satellite.

  But for now the air remains okay and he’s way too far into the story of his life to waste the remaining forty-eight hours pulling and hauling on a space suit that—given Bill’s slightly smaller frame—probably wouldn’t fit him anyway.

  The pull to get back to the keyboard is great, and this time not because of the escape it provides, but because he’s worried about the import of everything he’s chronicled, frightened that it doesn’t amount to as much as he thought. An autobiography of mundane occurrences and banal sameness, and an embarrassing lack of significant achievements. He isn’t happy with the way his life looks so far, and he’s hoping it will get better, rounding the corner of the last ten years. There have been happy times, he’s sure of that. But somehow, in print, as a chronicle, it seems so ordinary, and he’s caught himself wanting to lapse into fiction a few times, spice up a few things here and there. After all, who on Earth would know, so to speak?

  But the fact that it is, or was, his life forces him to stay honest about the details, even some that he would never have spoken about on Earth.

  There’s an incident in particular a few years back that still bothers me to the point of losing sleep, something I did nothing about in order to save my job. I didn’t find out until too late, and when I discovered the corporate leaders knew about it, I was convinced they would can me if I said anything. I just stowed the evidence away quietly and sat on it like a coward. I’ll never know how many people, if any, have been injured or maybe even killed. But a corporation that knowingly ships a bad, completely inactivated lot of a major antibiotic just to avoid the costs of a recall has to be committing a criminal act.

  Kip stops, wondering whether to risk putting the details down in print for the first time, knowing it could put several executives of the American branch of the company in prison. But who will care twenty or fifty or whatever years from now? And if by some miracle he does get rescued, he can quietly delete it.

  Ah, what the hell. No one’s reading this but me anyway.

  I think I want to tell you in detail exactly what happened, and how I found out.

  THE WHITE HOUSE, 4:18 P.M. PACIFIC/7:18 P.M. EASTERN

  Ron Porter makes it a point never to charge out of his office like the West Wing is on fire. He knows about the adrenaline that races into bloodstreams when a Chief of Staff looks panicked, and now is no exception—even late in the evening with most of the staff gone.

  He strolls to the desk just outside the Oval Office still occupied by the President’s secretary and catches her eye. Technically, she works for Porter, but he wouldn’t dare fire or chastise her without the President’s permission. She’s been working for the man for twenty years.

  Not that she needs chastising or firing, but sometimes Elizabeth Dela-court can be a bit too harsh as a gatekeeper.

  “Is he ready, Liz?” he asks, glad for the relaxed smile in return as she waves him in.

  He expects to find the President behind his desk, but instead sees him in front of the TV, quietly reading the latest words from Kip Dawson.

  Ron, too, has been caught in that distraction all day, canceling any productive work as he watched the words on his computer screen.

  “Pretty amazing, huh, Ron? Just one guy, but I can’t quite stop reading him. And…frankly, he’s making a lot of sense on some things.”

  “Mr. President, two items. First, the Chinese have just let it be known that they’re going to launch on Saturday to go get him regardless of our plans to launch Endeavor Saturday around noon, and the Russians plan to launch Saturday at the same time. On top of that, the Japanese Space Agency says they’re preparing an emergency launch for Friday.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I wish I were.”

  “This is ridiculous. What are they going to do if they all make it up there? Draw straws? Has Shear tried to discourage them?”

  “No. He’s en couraging them. The Russians in particular. He says it’s because Endeavor may not be ready, even though they’re already on the extended countdown.”

  “Call Shear at home, will you, and tell him now’s the time to pare this down to one reasonable backup launch. I know he can’t control those folks but he can beg and wheedle.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And the second item?”

  “Nothing we can do about it, but we just celebrated a completely unexpected, undeclared national holiday. Actually, more like international.”

  “What are you talking about, Ron?”

  “A large segment of our business community is reporting massive absenteeism and the retail sector is reporting plummeting sales. Everyone’s staying home to read what Dawson is writing.”

  “Really?”

  “There are estimates out there right now that over two thirds of our people are actively watching this, word by word, and probably close to a billion worldwide.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Mr. President, there are live feeds coming through beepers, moving sign boards, radio, television, cable, AM, FM, Web casts…you name it. In China, too, it’s virtually everywhere, with simultaneous translation. You remember we’ve remarked how fast the world can become a global village?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, now add all these other forms, including PDAs and the galaxy of so-called Wi Fi ‘hot spots’ around the nation. Cell phone screens, too. I’ve even heard that one of those advertising blimps is hovering off Malibu right now and scrolling Dawson’s words.”

  “A blimp?”

  “Yes, sir. If this continues, we might as well shut down any form of transportation not connected live to this thing. We have wire reports about hundreds of trave
lers changing their flights at the last minute to airlines that have live TV aboard. If it goes through Saturday, it may paralyze most of the civilized world.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “The AP is carrying a tale about an international flight on which one of the flight attendants remained on one of the audio channels for the entire thirteen hours reading the transcript aloud as the pilots downloaded it from the cockpit.”

  The President is silent as he’s drawn back to his own TV screen, Dawson’s words snagging his attention.

  “Wait, I want to read this.”

  I have to admit I feel guilty about this, too. So much so that if I were able to survive and return, one of my first acts would be to go to the nearest U.S. Attorney and give him a copy of everything I just wrote. And the sad part is that now that I go back through it, I realize I do know where the evidence is…where the bodies are buried, so to speak. Right there in my filing cabinet in my den under the 2004 tab. The folder with the red exclamation point on it and a rubber band around it. By the time anyone reads this, I’m sure everything in that cabinet will have been long since burned or buried in some landfill. But I know in my heart that there had to be at least a few patients out there who died or had a terrible time because the good old reliable Vectra penicillin they’d bought from us wasn’t working. No one…not the doctors, nurses, or pharmacists who trusted us implicitly…would have ever suspected the reason was simple greed. Someone needs to be prosecuted for this.

  “Did you see that, Ron?”

  “Yes, sir. So did most of the country.”

  “Vectra knowingly sold bad penicillin?”

  “We should act on this, don’t you think?”

  The President is nodding and pointing to the phone. “Let’s get Justice moving on this in the morning. No, wait. Those records he mentions. Let’s get those protected.”

  “FBI then?”

  “Yes. Quickly.” He turns back to the TV, quietly addressing the unseen writer as Porter hurries from the Oval.

  “So, what other bombshells do you have for us, Kip?”

  Chapter 29

  KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA, MAY 19,

  5:57 P.M. PACIFIC/8:57 P.M. EASTERN

  John Kent has lost count of how many nighttime approaches he’s made to the KSC runway in one of NASA’s T-38s, but this one is unannounced. He rolls the sleek twin jet onto a stable final approach, working the throttles forward and back to keep the supersonic trainer on speed across the threshold. Touchdown and aerobraking are followed by a rapid taxi to the ramp where an unmarked NASA car is waiting, the driver bringing the ladder over as John cuts the engines, opens the canopy, and finishes the shutdown checklist. The man is on the top of the ladder now and John reaches over to shake his hand before unstrapping.

  “Griggs! Great to see you.”

  “Glad you’re here, old sport. I’m beginning to feel like the French underground versus Vichy.”

  “World War II–speak again, Griggs?”

  “Can’t keep an amateur historian down. Need help outta that tin can?”

  “Nope. Stand back please, and don’t try this at home.” He pins the ejection seat, unstraps, and stands before swinging a leg carefully over the side and climbing down.

  He joins Hopewell in the front seat of the car.

  “Why am I here, Griggs?”

  “I need your help, John. We’ve got a presidential directive to launch and a soft sabotage operation being run by our dear administrator to prevent us from launching,” he says, gesturing toward the Pad 39 launch complex visible in the distance bathed in lights. “I don’t know why Shear is silly enough to believe he can send an operative into my space center and not be found out.”

  “The woman you told me about?”

  “Miss Dorothy Sheehan. I’ve had one of my guys watching her, and where Sheehan shows, nothing goes. She’s not red tagging anything herself, but throwing her HQ weight around so that anything she points to someone gets excited about. All day today it’s been one crisis after another, not a one of them legitimate. I’ve warned Curtis, because I think he’s in cahoots, but I don’t have enough evidence to go over Geoff’s head to the White House.”

  “And the bottom line is?”

  “We’re not going to make this window, John, if this crap continues.”

  “Of course he’s been against this from the start. Anything involving DiFazio…”

  “Is he wrong, John?”

  “Yes, dammit!

  “But we don’t want another Challenger, John. And, Bubba, since you is my bona fide partner in crime, I want to review everything they’ve fingered so far and have you take a long look at the overall plan.”

  “Look over your shoulder?”

  “Exactly. I’m afraid of pushing too hard, even against this rotten interference.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to my office. And before you ask, yes, I’ve got Kip Dawson’s monologue punched up on my computer. You were busy boring T-38-sized holes in the sky, but just before I came out to pick you up, he was talking about a huge scandal involving his drug company employer, and if someone doesn’t end up in the hoosegow over it, I’ll be shocked.”

  “Good Lord. He writes it there and things happen here, and he doesn’t even know it. Talk about the power of the pen.”

  TUCSON, ARIZONA, 7:15 P.M. PACIFIC/8:15 P.M. MOUNTAIN

  It doesn’t take an FBI agent to know that a moving light in an empty house is seldom a good thing. But Tucson police officer Jimmy Gonzalez can see nothing amiss as he slides up to the curb. He reads the call details again on his dash-mounted computer screen. “Next-door neighbor reports seeing flashlight beam moving around inside. Knows resident is out of town. Window involved on east side by shrubs.”

  There’s a phone number listed for the house and he punches up the number on his cell phone, waiting until it flips over to a voice-mail message.

  He closes the phone and types in that he’s leaving his car and investigating. Walking carefully, he moves along the eastern side of the rambler and positions himself to peer into the window where the flashlight beam was reported to have been.

  Nothing.

  He shines his powerful SureFire through the pane, lighting up a den that seems intact and untouched, then continues around the back and other side of the house, checking the doors before returning to his car.

  “House secure, nothing appears amiss,” he types, closing the call and deciding there’s no point to interviewing the complainant.

  Special Agent Kat Bronsky of the FBI has never loved the desert, but Tucson has been an exception, especially the pristine resorts on the northern flank of the town. This time, however, a two-week Homeland Security assignment meant a forgettable Tucson motel from where she’s spent most of the afternoon watching Kip Dawson’s amazing story unfold—including the fact that his home is less than a mile away from where she’s sitting. But reading that somewhere in the Dawson home is a file with evidence of criminal activity electrified her. For the past year she’s been part of a special strike force investigating Vectra Pharmaceuticals.

  A quick after-hours phone call to her superior in D.C. is unavoidable, if unanswered. She waits a fitful twenty minutes for a callback from the urgent beeper message she leaves, relieved when her cell phone finally rings with his number on the screen.

  “If I just read about it, Glen, and you read about it, at least someone at risk from Vectra saw it. We should get a warrant and get out there now.”

  “Already in motion, Kat. A big alert triggered by the White House came down moments before you called. We’re trying to roust the Tucson office right now.”

  “They’re not answering beepers or phones?”

  “The whole team is away in Phoenix, I think. We’re working on it.”

  “Okay, there’s no time. Let me take it.”

  “You don’t know the local judges.”

  “I don’t need to. There’s no one covering that house while we’re t
alking, so let me go out and at least watch the place. When you get the local team, have them get the warrant and hook up with me there.”

  “Kat, use the local police for that.”

  “Glen, that’ll go out on the radio channels, and anyone interested enough to be racing in to snatch that file will be on the police scanner.”

  “Okay, dammit, you’re making sense, as usual. But, Kat, this one is the highest priority for doing things right. We can’t screw up an evidentiary grab started by a presidential order without all our heads rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. Got it? No heroics. Do not go in or touch that file without a warrant.”

  “No problem. Message understood and acknowledged.”

  Finding the address and driving to 4550 East Fernhill takes less than ten minutes, and Kat parks down the street before walking back slowly, looking over the darkened residence as she approaches. Why is a local police cruiser in front of the house? She hesitates, pretending to search for an address, as the officer pulls away and passes her, accelerating around the corner as she makes a quick note of his plate number.

  She sees mature trees in the front yard casting deep shadows against an overhead streetlight and takes advantage of the black hole to disappear alongside the Dawson house, moving carefully past shrubbery until she’s at the northeast rear corner. She waits a minute to watch and listen. The house is dark and quiet, and she decides to move to the nearest window and peer in before checking the doors and finding the best vantage point from which to be sure no one enters.

  The ground beneath the window is a flower bed of soft topsoil anything but native to Tucson, and she steps in it carefully and lifts her eyes above the sill, letting her vision adjust to the darkness inside.