Pierre leaned forward, licked his lips, and smiled dreamily. “She is a porn star from London!”
“A porn star?”
“Well, peut-être, perhaps not quite a star as yet, I met her last month when I was doing that piece on the made-to-order underground-sex-disc business in England, and some of her footage was quite incredible, what she can do with her mouth and a few simple props, oo la la, and—”
“And you persuaded her that with your connections you just might be able to break her into real films in Paris.”
Pierre laughed. “You are right, ma petite, to you, I am transparent, but to her, well . . .”
“It is obviously necessary for her to come to Paris and give a private demonstration of her talents so that perhaps you will write a feature story on her for Actuel. . . .”
“Actually, I said Paris Match or peut-être Spiegel,” Pierre said. He shrugged. “It’s not as if I have never sold anything there. . . .”
“What a creature you are, Pierre Glautier!” Sonya exclaimed, toasting him with her champagne glass.
“You are not angry with me, then?”
“Don’t be silly,” Sonya told him. “I was only playing with you. Of course you were right, I do not wish to spend my whole two weeks with you in Paris. A few days, a few parties—”
“I go to three in the next four days—”
“—and then off to who knows where with whoever I meet.”
“That’s my Sonya!” Pierre said happily, obviously mightily relieved. “I promise I will do my best to help you find someone interesting, an Englishman perhaps—”
“Too obsessed with boring fetishes!”
“An Italian?”
“Hopeless phallocrats!”
“A rich German?”
“Please!”
“Ah , yes, I know you Russians, you collect nationalities! You would prefer one you have never had before. . . . A Romanian, maybe?”
“I had one in Vienna, like a cross between an Austrian and an Italian.”
“An Israeli?”
“In Nice.”
“Dutchman?”
“I’ve been to Amsterdam three times.”
“Irish?”
“Madrid.”
“Spaniard?”
“Back home in Brussels.”
“Japanese?”
“Once in Rome, and never again, thank you!”
“You are not making this easy,” Pierre complained. “What nationalities do you need to complete your collection?”
“Albanian, Cuban, Afrikaner, Chinese . . . ” Sonya said with a grin, ticking them off on her fingers.
“Be reasonable!”
“Maltese, New Zealander, Andorran . . .”
“Andorran!”
“According to my latest information, there are 180 member states in the United Nations, and this does not include the constituent republics and autonomous regions of the Soviet Union or the states of India,” Sonya told him. “I have experienced a mere 21 nationalities, which leaves me 159 to go at minimum, so surely the odds are on my side in such a cosmopolitan city as Paris, and with Pierre Glautier as my spirit guide, n’est-ce pas!”
Pierre laughed. “I’ll do my best,” he said, sidling closer to her. “In the meantime, how about a Frenchman to tide you over?”
“A Frenchman?” Sonya exclaimed with a giggle. “But they all think they are God’s gift to women!”
“But of course we are,” Pierre said, flinging himself upon her. “On the other hand, I would be the last to deny that the reverse is equally true!”
To an American space cadet who had seen NASA headquarters in Houston, the Paris headquarters of the European Space Agency was rather underwhelming. Tucked away on a little side street off the Avenue de Suffren close by the École Militaire and the grandiose curving sweep of the UNESCO building, it was a low, dingy-white institutional-modern building surrounded by larger and older and richer-looking apartment houses, with no unobstructed view of anything. Were it not for the national flags festooning the plain façade above the entrance, it could easily enough have passed for a medium-sized high school in the San Fernando Valley.
Indeed, a Valley high school would have had its own parking lot; here, however, André Deutcher was constrained to park on the street.
Once inside, they took an elevator to the third floor, where André ushered Jerry into a windowless conference room where three men were sitting around a black steel table. One wall was a big video screen and the others were adorned with big full-color blowups of the Hermes space shuttle, the Earth as seen from low orbit, and a Super-Ariane booster blasting off from a launching pad in Kourou.
The three of them stood up as Jerry and André entered, and offered their hands in turn as André introduced them. Nicola Brandusi was a tall, dark Italian in an elegant light tan suit. Ian Bannister was a rumpled and slightly overweight Englishman. Dominique Fabre, like André, was a Frenchman, but darker, with a hint of Arabic ancestry.
Fabre was introduced as the executive in charge of something called “Project Icarus,” Bannister was the hands-on project manager of the same thing, and Brandusi was from the personnel department. All of them spoke good English, which, Jerry was assured, was the working language of ESA when it came down to actual international engineering work forces.
“And how have you been enjoying Paris, Mr. Reed?” Fabre said when they were all seated. “André tells me this is your first visit. I hope he’s been showing you a good time.”
Jerry smiled at him. “Pas problem,” he said, essaying one of the handful of French phrases he had picked up from Nicole Lafage. Fabre smiled back. André chuckled.
“Shall we get down to business, gentlemen?” Bannister said.
“By all means, Ian,” said Fabre. “You are more or less familiar with the Daedalus, Mr. Reed?”
Jerry nodded. “I’ve read the literature and I’ve seen the film at Parc de la Villette,” he said, wondering just whose idea it had really been for Nicole to take him there yesterday.
“It’s the next giant step into space, Jerry—if I may Jerry you, Jerry—so to speak,” Bannister said. “Not as glamorous as the Russian Mars mission, maybe, but in the end much more important. As things stand now, the only way to get people up out of the gravity well is still atop great big bloody primitive rockets, which, runway reentry vehicles or no, still means huge expensive launch complexes and pathetically damn few of them. But with the Daedalus, we’ll be able to fly directly into orbit from any major airport in the world. . . .”
“Commercial space travel will finally become a reality, at least for those who can afford it,” Fabre said. “The problem, of course, is that there’s no place to go that makes economic sense. . . .”
“We’ve had the bloody engine design for decades and the airframe is just a matter of materials and engineering,” Bannister said in a rather exasperated tone of voice. “We’ll be able to roll out a prototype in less than two years.”
“But we can’t get the financing to go into production, Jerry,” André Deutcher said. “The Common European Parliament has authorized three Daedaluses as a matter of prestige, but they’ll have to be configured primarily as satellite launchers, which is a total waste, and with a production run like that, they’ll be ridiculously expensive.”
“Makes no sense,” Bannister said. “Not when we could produce them for 30 percent of the unit cost on a production line, like airliners.”
“Well, why not?” Jerry said. “Surely there’s a market for a plane like that!”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Bannister. “But all the bankers see is the cost per passenger mile. They just laugh at us, look what a disaster the Concorde was, they say. Three times as fast as the 747, but a complete commercial flop nevertheless.”
“They want us to scale the plane up to carry 250 passengers and lose the orbital capability,” André said. “Now we do have a compromise design, a version capable of flying 175 passengers as a suborbita
l liner that could take about seventy-five people or a nice cargo load into Low Earth Orbit, given extra fuel and life-support oxygen. . . .”
“But to get a good production run of the compromise version financed, we have to give the full orbital capability an economic justification,” Fabre said.
“Which presently doesn’t exist,” said Bannister. “We’re between a rock and a hard place. We can build three smaller Daedaluses with orbital capability on the ESA budget, or we can get the financing for a fleet of bigger hypersonic airliners with no orbital capability. . . .”
“Or find some way to justify the compromise version,” André said.
“The Geosynchronous space station!” Jerry exclaimed, finally getting the drift of it.
“Right, Jerry,” André said. “The Méridien people have already agreed to finance 20 percent of it with a resort in GEO provided we first guarantee them a transportation system that can get the customers there. We have interest from several companies willing to invest in the project in order to build retirement communities for the elderly rich and zero-g hospitals and convalescent homes. It will be an ideal base from which to launch and service communication satellites.”
“And it will be the logistical base needed to make a real Moon colony viable,” Bannister said.
“Which can be expanded using lunar material at less than half the cost of boosting it from Earth . . .”
“Making it possible to assemble large ships able to support a permanent settlement on Mars . . .”
“And bring back iron asteroids from the Belt . . .”
“Eventually water ice from the Jovian satellites . . .”
“You’re talking about building a real city in space!” Jerry exclaimed. “You’re talking about opening up the whole solar system!”
Ian Bannister’s eyes bored right into him with an intensity that Jerry had not seen for years, a fire of engineering passion he had long since thought had gone from the world, and for a moment, it seemed as if Rob Post’s eyes from long ago were looking back at him over a big bowl of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream swimming in Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and a thrill went through him as Bannister spoke in a hard, cold, determined voice.
“You’re bloody damned straight we are, my lad,” he said.
“Of course all that will be the work of decades,” Fabre said.
“But we know how to do it, Dominique,” Bannister insisted. “No major breakthroughs are required. All we’ve got to do is roll up our sleeves and get to work!”
“And put the financial package together, Ian,” André Deutcher pointed out. “Which brings us to Project Icarus, Jerry.”
“The missing piece in the puzzle,” Fabre said. “Ian . . . ?”
“What we need is a means for getting the Daedalus from Low Earth Orbit out to GEO,” Bannister said. “Something like one of your bloody military sat sleds writ large. Take off from an airport runway, fly into LEO, then attach a propulsion module to take it to GEO, you’ve seen the presentation at Parc de la Villette . . .”
“That’s Project Icarus?”
Bannister nodded. “Well?” he said.
For a long moment everyone was silent, as Jerry felt the pressure of all their eyes turned on him. “Well what?” he finally said.
“Well, what do you think, lad!” Bannister snapped.
Jerry looked in turn from Bannister to André to Fabre and back to Bannister, wondering just what to say.
The vision that they had opened up before him was enormous, exhilarating, the return of the long-gone dream that had set his boyhood spirit soaring, and he felt an energy in the room, a connectivity, a passion, and a hope, that left him feeling like a little boy with his nose pressed to a pastry-shop window, and he longed to return that enthusiasm with a positive reply that would admit him to this charmed circle.
The truth, however, was something else again, and with a nervous little sigh, Jerry Reed at last opted for it.
“It’s shit for the birds,” he said.
The silence was deadly. The stares were unwavering. Jerry stared straight into the Englishman’s eyes. Bannister didn’t give him a clue. There seemed nothing for it but to go on.
“Any magnetic clamps strong enough to take the acceleration would screw up your electronic systems royally,” he said. “Where you’ve got the sled clamped, the rocket exhaust will fry the vehicle. If the thrust isn’t directly along the center axis of the Daedalus, your chances of controlling the thing are slim and none.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry, Ian,” he said, “but there you are. No one’s ever tried to build a sat sled to move a payload that massive before, but it is essentially scaled-up sat-sled technology, and I’ve been working on it for years, and I do know what I’m talking about. What can I say? The whole design is fucked.”
Jerry braced himself for the inevitable explosion.
But it never came.
“We know that, lad,” Bannister said softly. “And we also know, as you have just proven, that the Rockwell sat-sled team is years ahead of us. We know that you have what it takes to help us turn that bloody sword into a marvelous plowshare.”
The expense-account holiday, the Ritz, Nicole, all the money ESA had lavished on him, it all suddenly began to make sense to Jerry. They weren’t just recruiting a bright young engineer; the bad luck that had landed him in the lousy sat-sled program had, through a brighter turn of fate, made him someone special, someone with access to the key piece of technology to make this whole wonderful scheme work. What delicious irony that the job he hated was the very thing that had dropped this sweet plum right into his lap!
The Italian, Nicola Brandusi, had said not a word during all this tech talk, sitting back in his chair as if it were all Greek or worse to him, but now he leaned forward, smiled at Jerry, and all at once became the focus of attention.
“We are prepared to make you an offer now, Mr. Reed,” he said. “Ten thousand ECU a month, plus full social benefits, with annual salary reviews. A fifty-thousand ECU relocation bonus provided you sign a three-year contract, and of course the full resources of ESA in helping you find suitable quarters here in Paris.”
“To work on my team, Jerry,” Bannister said. “What do you say, lad?”
“It sure is tempting,” Jerry blurted, for of course it was, nor was it entirely unexpected, for André Deutcher had made it clear from the very beginning that this was the purpose of ESA’s beneficence, though the financial terms were quite a bit juicier than Jerry had imagined. Then again, the sat-sled technology that was his end of the deal made it a bargain in their terms at twice the price.
Still, now that the offer was actually on the table, he found himself in something of a state of shock.
“Take your time, Mr. Reed,” Brandusi said. “We realize that this is not a step to be taken lightly.”
“By all means, take your time, enjoy Paris,” Bannister said good-naturedly, “there’ll be time enough for me to work your arse off later!”
“We can talk about it over lunch, Jerry,” André Deutcher suggested. “There is quite a decent little Moroccan place not far from—”
“If you don’t mind, I think I’d just like to go back to the hotel,” Jerry muttered. “I’m not very hungry right now, and I need some time to think. . . .”
And indeed, he found himself lost in his own thoughts already, even as the meeting broke up in smiles and handshakes.
What the Europeans were planning was grand indeed, and if they succeeded, it would be in significant measure because of the spacetug they were asking him to help design, and his fantasies were already racing ahead to the next step, to something they had apparently not yet thought of, for if you linked the tug technology to the American shuttle tanks that were now being wasted with every launch, why you could cobble together spaceliners capable of taking tourists as far as the Moon, and maybe even Mars, and if he was instrumental in getting that built, he could surely promote himself a berth on it, and . . .
All hi
s life, he had been waiting for a chance like this, waiting for a chance to be, as Rob Post had said, one of the people who made the golden age of space exploration happen, one of the people who would live to set foot on the Moon, on Mars, even beyond, and all his life he had known that when that chance came, he would take it without a moment’s hesitation.
But that it would mean leaving everything and everyone he had ever known to do it . . .
That he would even consider doing such a thing . . .
That he would even consider not leaping at the chance . . .
He could walk on water.
He would indeed have to give up everything else to do it.
But he could walk on water.
Sonya Gagarin was beginning to wonder how long it was going to take for her luck to change. This was the second party Pierre Glautier had taken her to, and from the look of things, it was going to be the second party she left with Pierre. Not that she minded, but his London porn star was going to arrive in two days, and if Sonya didn’t connect up with someone interesting by then, she’d have to make plans for the rest of her vacation on her own.
Pierre would take just about any journalistic assignment he could hustle up—from rock-music coverage and low-down items like the English sex-disc-to-order business, to lightweight popular treatment of subjects as serious as the election of a new Pope or the Common Europe space program, meaning that one of the charms of partying with Pierre was that you could never predict the sort of scene you would find yourself in next.
But it could become rather exasperating too. Last night’s soiree had been the launch party for a magazine called La Cuisine Humaine, dedicated to transnational gourmandizing, and had featured an incredible buffet of the most diverse and delicious dishes from around the world that Sonya had ever stuffed herself silly on.
Unfortunately, most of the men at the party were well into early middle age, more of them than not were in attendance with their wives, and not only seemed boringly obsessed with the free food and drink they were greedily cramming down their throats, but clearly displayed the results of their primary passion around the waist and buttocks.
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