The Cassandra Project

by Jack McDevitt

  Al was in Huntsville, where he oversaw NASA’s archives.

  “You saw the press conference?”

  “I heard about it.”

  “What happened? Where’d that thing come from?”

  “I don’t know. I have my people going back over the record now, trying to figure it out.”

  “Was it really in the package?”

  “Oh, yes. I was hoping it wouldn’t be there. It would save a lot of work. The records from that era aren’t exactly digital. Something like that can be hard to find. We’ll need a little time.”

  “Who was the CAPCOM?” The guy on the NASA end of the transmissions.

  “Hold on a second.” Al was thumbing through documents in a folder. “Here it is. Frank Kirby. I thought that was his voice. He was there for most of the missions during the lunar era.”

  “Assume it is their voices, Kirby’s and Myshko’s, is there any way that could have happened? Might it have been, for example, a practice run-through of some sort?”

  Barbara’s radio was playing in the outer office. Sounded like the Downtowners singing about women and bullet trains. “Sure,” Al said. “It could have been anything. Probably, they were just screwing around during off time, playing out what they desperately would have liked to do. All those guys wanted to make the landing. But sure, it had to be something like that.”

  “Okay, Al. Look, let me know if you get something more, okay?”

  “Absolutely, Jerry. Umm—are they upset over there?”

  “It’ll pass. Mary doesn’t like it much when the organization looks silly.”

  “Yeah. They’re on my case here, too. I can’t believe they actually expected me to vet all that stuff.” He sounded rattled. “Anyway, I’m sorry we made a problem for you.”

  —

  Jerry wondered whether he should mention the incident in the NASA blog. He didn’t want to do anything to extend the story, but he’d be perceived as ducking it if he didn’t say something. He started a response, It doesn’t take much to excite the media. Then deleted it. It’s never a good idea to attack the reporters. He grinned. Especially if you’re a public-relations guy. Maybe substitute public for media. Yeah, that might do it.

  Barbara’s voice broke in: “Jerry, you have a visitor.”

  He glanced at his calendar. Nothing was scheduled. “Who is it, Barb?”

  “Morgan Blackstone.”

  Blackstone? The overhyped cowboy billionaire who was always talking about taking America into space? What the hell could he want with Jerry? “Okay,” he said, as if Blackstone stopped by every day, “send him in.”

  He tapped his keyboard and brought up a proposal Mary had made for an unmanned Mars mission. It had gone nowhere. He was gazing steadily at it, pretending to be absorbed, when the door opened. He held up a hand, busy at the moment, have a seat, be right with you. Jerry tapped the display a couple of times and made a face. Then he looked up.

  He was accustomed to dealing with people in high places, but he felt immediately intimidated. Blackstone was one of those men who could walk into a party at the White House and take over the room. He towered over Jerry, who, at five-eight, disappeared easily into crowds. An irritating smile suggested he was bestowing a favor merely by being there. Thick black hair and an unruly mustache added to the cowboy mystique. He obviously worked out a lot, and he walked like John Wayne. He’d have looked perfectly at home with six-guns strapped to his hips.

  Despite all that, Jerry could have tolerated him except that the son of a bitch made a habit of criticizing NASA. The Agency was a waste of government funding. Bureaucrats bound for Mars but traveling by dog cart. A few weeks ago, on Meet the Press, he’d commented that NASA had gone to the Moon a half century ago, come home, and been sitting on the front porch ever since.

  Jerry did not normally rise when men came into his office. But somehow he found himself on his feet. “Please,” he said, “have a seat, Mr. Blackstone.” He indicated the wing chair, which was his preferred location for visitors. It was a bit lower than the other chairs. “What can I do for you?”

  Blackstone ignored the chair. “You can start, Jerry, by calling me ‘Bucky.’”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bucky.” The billionaire came forward and shook his hand. Jerry leaned back on the desk, and Blackstone finally sat down. “How’s everything going with Blackstone Enterprises?”

  Blackstone nodded. “Well enough,” he said. “I guess the truth is that we’re having an easier time than NASA.”

  “You probably don’t have all the facts,” Jerry said. “We’re doing all right.”

  His visitor nodded. “Every time the government has a problem, they cut your funding.”

  “We’re still here.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Jerry.” He cleared his throat. “I suspect the country will always be in good shape as long as NASA is here and functioning.”

  “We like to think so, Bucky.” Blackstone glanced back toward the outer office. The Downtowners were doing “The Frankford El.” The volume had gone down, but it was still audible. He signaled surprise that Jerry would permit such moonshine. “Guilty pleasure,” Jerry said. “What can I do for you?”

  Blackstone smiled benignly. He understood perfectly. We all have weaknesses. “I saw the press conference this morning,” he said.

  Jerry nodded. “Odd story, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes.” He sat back, relaxed, crossed his legs. “More years ago than I care to remember, I did public relations for the Stanfield Corporation. Nothing at the level you’re operating at, of course. But I remember how unnerving it could be. You were always at the mercy of the unexpected.”

  “That’s certainly true.”

  “I thought you handled yourself pretty well, Jerry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Were you able to find out how it happened? The conversation between Myshko and ground control? What was it, some sort of test run?”

  “Probably. We haven’t tracked it down yet, Bucky.” He didn’t feel comfortable using the man’s first name. “But I can’t imagine what else it could have been.”

  “Of course. I thought maybe it was a hoax. That somebody added it to the information released by NASA.”

  “At this point, we just don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

  Blackstone leaned back and shook his head. “Strange things happen.” He had dark, piercing eyes, narrow cheeks, and a no-nonsense manner.

  “I guess,” Jerry said. “Did you come in for the press conference? I didn’t see you in the room anywhere.”

  “No. I was up talking to your boss. Afterward, I went down to the cafeteria for lunch. I always like eating here. You never know whom you might meet. Anyhow, that’s where I saw it. Just the last fifteen minutes or so.”

  Jerry wasn’t sure how to respond. So he made a sound deep in his throat and nodded.

  “Jerry, I know your time is valuable, and I don’t want to take it up unnecessarily.” Blackstone smiled, and much of the hardness went away. “Despite what we’d like to see happen, we both know NASA’s time is done. Over. There’s a lot of pressure right now by the corporates who feed off NASA to keep you going, and that’s the only thing keeping it afloat.”

  “I’m not sure I agree.”

  “It’s okay. We can debate it another time. At the moment, we both know UPY and MagLev and all the rest of them have made a fair income selling Saturns and test vehicles and God knows what else to the government for sixty years. They’re not in the same league with the armaments industry, but there’s still a lot of money involved. Today, though, times are changing. The government’s under a lot of pressure. Next year’s an election year, and the public is up in arms. They’ve had it with billions spent for a program that doesn’t do anything. You know as well as I do that the Hall of Fame is a diversion, the latest step in a general shutdown.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Bucky.”

  Blackstone shrugged. Jerry’s opinion was of no
consequence. “The president’s going to have to show more progress in cutting costs than he’s been able to do so far. He’s even going to go after the Pentagon, I hear. You really think he won’t be coming after you? After NASA, that is?”

  “They’ve already hit us pretty hard. We’re still here, though. We’ll still be here when I retire.”

  Blackstone’s eyebrows rose, and an amused smile appeared. “You know, Jerry, the truth is that, okay, you need public funding at the start for something like a space program. You have to have it. The project’s just too big, the risk too great, for any individual company. But once you get it off the ground, the best way, the way that’s always worked most effectively in this country, is to turn it over to private industry. If Nixon had done that in, say, 1973, it’s hard to say where we might be by now.”

  Jerry didn’t really want to get into an argument. And in any case, he knew there was some justification for what Blackstone was saying. So he held out his hands, suggesting that the future was anybody’s guess. “How about some coffee, Bucky?”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I should be on my way.”

  “Okay.”

  “If we’re ever really going to get back to the Moon, put together a manned expedition to Mars, do anything like that, it will be a private entity that does it, probably a group of corporations. I came here today to talk with Mary Gridley about some areas where we can help each other. And I watched you in that press conference when they asked you about the Myshko flight.

  “You handled yourself pretty well, Jerry. NASA will never get to Mars. You know that as well as I do. But we will. Blackstone Enterprises. If you’re interested, when we leave, we’d like you to come along.”

  “You’re offering me a job?”

  “I need a good public-relations officer. I have a good one in Ed Camden, but I’ll admit to you that he doesn’t believe in what we’re doing. I need somebody to be the face of the organization, a true believer. Someone who understands that we belong in space. That we have to get clear of this world if we’re ever going to be more than simply a lot of people sitting around watching television. That we’ll continue to evolve as a civilization.”

  “Bucky,” Jerry said, “I appreciate the offer. It’s very kind of you.”

  “But—?”

  “I’m committed here. I just don’t agree that a single corporation or a corporate group can manage a project of this size. I think that, if the United States government can’t do it, if NASA doesn’t do it, it’s not going to happen.”

  “Jerry, the future’s with us.”

  “I wish you luck. But you’ll have to show me.”

  “We will. In any case, the offer’s on the table. But it won’t be there forever.”

  —

  Jerry was the most visible person in NASA, save for the old astronauts. That was like being the biggest satellite in Earth orbit, except for the Moon. Nevertheless, Jerry got a lot of calls from strangers. Barbara deflected the majority of them. They tended to be from people asking how they could become astronauts, meet astronauts, or get astronauts to help out in various fund-raising events. A few were from cranks who complained that NASA was spending too much money or wanted to know why we weren’t on Mars. And some even wanted to report meetings with aliens or UFO sightings.

  Occasionally, she passed one that mattered on to him. “From somebody named Harkins,” she said. “He says he’s a former Navy captain. And that it’s important.”

  “Did he say what it’s about, Barb?”

  “Negative. Insists he’ll talk only to you, Boss.”

  —

  The guy was easily in his eighties. White hair brushed back, bifocals, cracked voice. But he sat straight up in a leather chair, his wrists draped over the armrests. “My name’s James Harkins, Mr. Culpepper,” he said. “I used to fly choppers for the Navy.”

  Jerry could see the flickering light of a fire in the background. “Yes, Mr. Harkins, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m not sure that what I have to say will be of any interest to you. But I think it’s time for someone to know. I watched you earlier today.”

  “Okay. What did you want to tell me, sir?”

  “I was aboard the Kennedy when it picked up the Myshko team. There were three of them on board, of course.” The other astronauts had been Louie “Crash” Able and Brian Peters.

  Jerry had a sinking feeling. Whether it was a suspicion that he was about to hear something that would undercut his convictions or because he was going to discover that Harkins wasn’t as sane as he looked, he couldn’t be sure. “You actually helped pick them up?”

  “No. But I was on deck when they were brought in.”

  “All right. So what did you want to tell me?”

  “Maybe nothing, really. Nothing that makes any sense. But it’s always bothered me, and I’d just written it off until I heard about that radio exchange. Between the capsule and ground control.”

  “What did you see, Captain?”

  “We pulled three astronauts out of the water, Mr. Culpepper. They all had bags with them. Well, no big deal about that. It’s what you’d expect. But one of them stumbled coming on board and dropped the bag on the deck. I don’t remember which one it was.”

  “And—?”

  “A couple of rocks fell out.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Mr. Culpepper, these guys were riding a Saturn rocket. Weight mattered. Why would any of them take along a couple of rocks?”

  2

  Had he accepted Blackstone’s offer, Jerry would have been perceived by his colleagues as betraying the organization. And betraying them. It would be an admission that he believed NASA’s mission had effectively ended. That the future for the organization had run out. It would also, he thought, be a betrayal of himself.

  He loved working for NASA. Loved what it stood for. The ongoing lack of funding, which continued year after year, decade after decade, was frustrating. Infuriating. He was not a little kid, was not affected by idle dreams of flying to the Moon so we could say we’d done it. He believed relentlessly that humanity had to move on or slide backward. That the planet was becoming too crowded. That there were practical reasons to establish a foothold beyond the home world. He wasn’t sure precisely what the nature of that foothold should be. But he knew that it required the presence of an active United States.

  But somewhere down the line, we’d sold out.

  Jerry had worked on several political campaigns, including the gubernatorial and presidential runs of President Cunningham. He’d done public relations for Ohio State, for the Pentagon, and for the Carmichael & Henry law firm. In all those situations, everyone on board had understood that they were there to sell a product. His colleagues in the various government agencies felt the same way. The connection was strictly business. Even the political campaigns. There’d been no sense of destiny in the wind, of inevitable disaster if Laura Hopkins had made it into the Oval Office instead of George Cunningham. They all pretended to believe the fate of the nation rested on the election, but everybody knew that the nation would survive however the vote tally went. But with NASA, it was somehow different.

  Cape Canaveral was the gateway to the world beyond. That was where it was all supposed to happen. And if they’d been a little slower to roll out the future than everyone had expected, it wasn’t the fault of the Agency. The money, and the political will, had never been there. They’d gone to the Moon, and somehow, for the politicians at least, the luster came off. There was nowhere else to go. Mars was too far. Nobody cared about robot missions. Nobody cared about orbiting telescopes. Consequently, NASA had been left to its own devices. No politician dared close it down, though, because the space agency had somehow become inextricably interconnected with America. But they left it on a subsistence diet. Jerry’s packing up and heading out to Blackstone Enterprises, Inc., would ruin his reputation with those who understood what the Agency represented. And these were people he cared about. Blackstone want
ed nothing so much as to bring down the Agency.

  Jerry sat in his office watching rain clouds roll in from the west. He’d taken the job there with some reluctance. Mary had been George’s campaign manager in Ohio and later an active participant in his successful run for the White House. At the president’s suggestion, she’d hired Jerry, who’d come to the Cape with some reluctance. Everyone knew the Agency was a ticket to nowhere. But his attitude had changed during his two and a half years on the Space Coast. He’d become a certified true believer. If we were to get off world, Jerry knew, NASA was indispensable.

  Barbara’s voice broke through the clouds: “Jerry, Al’s on the line.”

  Returning Jerry’s call. She put him on-screen, and he smiled uncomfortably. “I checked the transmissions, Jerry,” he said, staring down at a piece of paper on his desk. “They are correct.” Al was close to retirement, and he looked it. He was tired and ready to go. His skull gleamed in the light from a lamp.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could have warned you. But there’s just no way. We don’t have the people—”

  “It’s all right, Al.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Actually, yes. I need a favor. Can you send me the complete record of the Myshko flight? The communications? Everything?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But I can probably have one of my people do a search if you just tell me what you’re looking for.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m looking for, Al.”

  “You’ll know it when you see it?”

  “Exactly.”

  He nodded. Frowned. “Jerry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Look, I can tell you you’d be wasting your time. I’ve read through the transcripts. I think they were just screwing around, Myshko and the CAPCOM.”

  “You’re probably right, Al. If they were, though, I need to know about it.”

  “Okay.” He sucked in some air. “You’ll have it before you go home tonight.”