by Dan Simmons
They drove slowly past the sprawling Headquarters Building and turned off the parkway into the lot of the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building. The huge, three-story complex looked as ugly and functional as it had during Baedecker's stay there during the training and prelaunch phases of his Apollo mission. Ribbons of glass on the west side caught the last gleam of the sunset as they parked the car.
"This is sort of a big deal, isn't it?" said Scott as they walked toward the main entrance. "Thanksgiving dinner with the astronauts and all."
"It's not really Thanksgiving dinner," said Baedecker. "The members of the crew had dinner with their families earlier. This is just coffee and pie . . . sort of a traditional gathering the night before a flight."
"Isn't it unusual for NASA to fly on a holiday like this?" asked Scott.
"Not really," said Baedecker as they stopped to show their identification to a guard just inside the door. An Air Force aide led the way up a narrow staircase. "Apollo 8 flew around the moon over Christmas," Baedecker continued. "Besides, the DoD set the date for this launch because of the satellite deployment windows."
"And besides that," said Scott, "Thanksgiving is today and the launch is tomorrow."
"Right," said Baedecker. There were two more checkpoints before they were shown into a small waiting room outside of the crew dining quarters. Baedecker looked around at the green sofa, uncomfortable chairs, and low coffee table covered with magazines, and was pleased for some reason that the private quarters area had maintained the same late-sixties feel to it that he had known two decades earlier.
The door opened and a group of businessmen emerged from the dining room. They were guided by a young Air Force major. One of the men wearing a dark suit and carrying an attaché case stopped when he saw Baedecker. "Dick," he said, "goddammit, it's true then that Rockwell got you."
Baedecker stood up and shook hands. "Not true, Cole," he said. "Just stopping by for a social call. Cole, I don't know if you've met my son. Scott, this is Cole Prescott, my boss back in St. Louis."
"We met years ago," said Prescott as he shook hands with Scott. "At the company picnic right after Dick started working for the company. You were about eleven, I think."
"I remember the three-legged race," said Scott. "Nice to see you again, Mr. Prescott."
Prescott turned to Baedecker. "So what have you been up to, Dick? We haven't heard from you in . . . what? Six months?"
"Seven," said Baedecker. "Scott and I spent last spring and summer fixing up an old cabin in Arkansas."
"Arkansas?" said Prescott and winked at Scott. "What the hell is in Arkansas?"
"Not much," said Baedecker.
"Hey," said Prescott. "I heard tell that you were out talking to people at North American. ¿Es verdad?"
"Just talking."
"Yeah, that's what they all say," said Prescott. "But look, Dick, if you haven't signed with anybody . . ." He paused and looked around. The others had left. Through the slightly opened door to the dining room came laughter and the clink of dishes. "Cavenaugh's retiring this January, Dick."
"Yes?"
"Yes." Prescott leaned over as if about to whisper. "I'll be filling his chair when he goes. That leaves room on the second level, Dick. If you had any thoughts about coming back in, now'd be the time."
"Thanks, Cole," said Baedecker, "but I have a job right now. Well, not exactly a job, but a project that will be keeping me pretty busy for the next few months."
"What's that?"
"I'm finishing work on a book that David Muldorff began a couple of years ago," said Baedecker. "The part remaining involves quite a bit of traveling and interviewing. In fact, I have to fly to Austin on Monday to start work on it."
"A book," said Prescott. "Got an advance on it yet?"
"A modest one," said Baedecker. "Most of the royalties will go to Dave's wife Diane and their little boy, but we're using the advance to cover some of the expenses."
Prescott nodded and glanced at his watch. "Okay," he said, "but keep in mind what I said. It was nice seeing you again. Dick, Scott."
"You too," said Baedecker.
Prescott paused by the door. "It was a damn shame about Muldorff."
"Yes," said Baedecker. "It was."
Prescott departed just as a NASA PR man in shirtsleeves and a black tie came to the open door of the dining room. "Colonel Baedecker?"
"Yes."
"The crew's just about ready for dessert. Would you and your son like to come in now?"
There were five astronauts and seven other men at the long table. Tucker Wilson made the introductions. Besides Tucker, Baedecker knew Fred Hagen, the copilot on this mission, and Donald Gilroth, one of the NASA administrators present. Gilroth had put on considerable weight and corporate status since Baedecker had last seen him.
The three other astronauts, two mission specialists and a payload specialist, were also Air Force. Tucker was the only full-time NASA pilot involved in this mission, and despite recent efforts to include women and minorities in the space effort, this all-military flight was a step back to the WASP-male tradition. Conners and Miller, the mission specialists, were quiet and serious but the youngest crewmember, a blond youngster named Holmquist, had a high, infectious laugh that made Baedecker like him immediately.
There were a few minutes of obligatory discussion of the old Apollo days as the pie and coffee arrived, and then Baedecker turned the conversation to the upcoming mission. "Fred, you've been waiting quite a while for this, haven't you?"
Hagen nodded. He was a few years younger than Baedecker, but his crew cut had gone completely gray so that he looked a bit like Archibald Cox. Baedecker realized with a start that most of the shuttle pilots were approaching his age. Space, once a frontier so frightening that the experts had worried that the youngest, boldest, and strongest of the nation's test pilots might not withstand its rigors, had now become the property of men with bifocals and prostate worries.
"I've been waiting since the MOL folded," Hagen said. "With a little luck, I'll help to fly up its successor as part of the space station."
"What was the MOL?" asked Scott.
"Manned Orbiting Laboratory," said Holmquist. The blond mission specialist was only two or three years older than Scott. "It was one of the Air Force's pet projects, like the X-20 Dyna Soar, that never got off the ground. Before our time, Scott."
"Yeah," said Tucker and lobbed a wadded-up napkin at the younger astronaut, "back in pretransistor days."
"I suppose you could look at the shuttle orbiter as a bigger, better Dyna Soar," said Baedecker and even as he said it, he saw the word in his mind as "dinosaur." He had flown powerless lifting bodies at Edwards in the mid-sixties as part of NASA's contribution to the defunct Air Force program.
"Sure," said Hagen, "and Spacelab's sort of an updated, international version of the MOL . . . a couple of decades late. And Spacelab itself has become a sort of a test project for the space station components we'll start ferrying up in a couple of years."
"You're not carrying Spacelab on this mission though, are you?" asked Scott.
There was a silence in which several men shook their heads. The DoD payload was out-of-bounds for this conversation, and Scott knew it.
"Is weather still a worry?" asked Baedecker. Thunderstorms across the Gulf had been building up by midmorning for days.
"Little bit," said Tucker. "Last word from meteorology was go, but they didn't sound too sincere. What the hell. The windows are brief, but we've got them for three days in a row. You two going to be in the VIP stands tomorrow, Dick?"
"Wouldn't miss it," said Baedecker.
"What do you think of all this, Scott?" asked Hagen. The Air Force colonel was looking at the redhead with friendly interest.
Scott started to shrug and stopped himself. He glanced at his father and then looked right at Hagen. "To be honest, sir, I find it very interesting and a little sad."
"Sad?" It was Miller, one of the mission specialists, a dark,
intense man who reminded Baedecker a bit of Gus Grissom. "Why sad?"
Scott opened the fingers of his left hand and took a breath. "You're not broadcasting the launch tomorrow, right? Not allowing reporters on the Cape? Not announcing any part of the mission progress except the absolute minimum. Not even telling the public when exactly the launch is going to take place, right?"
"That's correct," said Captain Conners. There was the clipped quality of the Air Force Academy in his voice. "That seems the least we can do for national security in what has to be a classified mission." Conners glanced at the others as a waiter picked up the pie plates and refilled coffee cups. Holmquist and Tucker were smiling as they looked at Scott. The others were just looking.
Scott did shrug, but he grinned before he spoke and Baedecker felt that some of the fierce, unrelenting intensity that he had felt emanating from his son for years had lessened somewhat in recent weeks. "I understand that," said Scott, "but I remember the days when Dad flew . . . when the press knew about it every time a crew member farted . . . excuse me, but that's what it was like. For the families, too. At least during the missions. What I'm trying to say is I just remember how open it was and how we kept comparing that to the secrecy of the Russians' program. We were proud to let it all hang out for everybody to see. Now, I guess, it makes me a little sad that we're getting to be more like the Soviets."
Miller opened his mouth to speak, but Holmquist's laugh cut him off. "Too true," said Holmquist. "But I tell you, my man, we've got a long way to go before we're like the Russians.
Did you see the reporters down at Melbourne Airport taking notes as all the defense contractors' baggage came in? That's all they needed to let them know what kind of payload's flying. Have you seen the Washington Post or New York Times today?"
Scott shook his head.
The young payload specialist went on to describe the articles appearing in press and TV, never confirming or denying their veracity but elaborating in humorous detail the frustrated efforts of Air Force press officers to stick their fingers in a dike that had become a sieve. One of the NASA administrators told a story about the press boats that were being chased from the area when all the while Soviet intelligence-gathering ships were deployed just beyond the restricted zone.
Fred Hagen offered a tale about his X-15 days when an enterprising reporter disguised himself as a visiting Brazilian Air Force officer to get an exclusive. Baedecker told about his trip to the Soviet Union prior to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and how, late one wintry night, Dave Muldorff had walked up to a lampshade in their living quarters in Star City and suggested loudly that a nightcap sure would hit the spot, but they were all out of the complimentary booze their hosts had provided. Ten minutes later a Russian orderly had shown up with bottles of vodka, Scotch, and champagne.
There was more laughter as the dinner group broke up into small conversations and several of the administrators took their leave. Holmquist and Tucker were talking to Scott when Don Gilroth walked around the table and put his hand on Baedecker's shoulder. "Dick, could we take a minute? Outside here?"
Baedecker followed the other man into the empty waiting room. Gilroth closed the door and hitched his belt up over his ample stomach. "Dick, I didn't know if we'd get a chance to talk tomorrow, so I thought I'd get to you tonight."
"Talk about what?" said Baedecker.
"About coming back to work for NASA," said the administrator.
Baedecker blinked in surprise. The idea had never occurred to him.
"I talked to Cole Prescott and Weitzel and some of the others, and I hear you're considering some other things, but I wanted you to know that NASA's interested too," said Gilroth. "I know we'll never be competitive with private industry, but these are exciting times around here. We're trying to rebuild the whole program."
"Don," said Baedecker, "I'll be fifty-four years old before long."
"Yeah, and I'll be fifty-nine in August," said Gilroth. "Don't know if you've noticed, Dick, but the shop isn't being run by teenagers these days."
Baedecker shook his head. "I've been out of touch for too many years . . ."
Gilroth shrugged. "We're not talking about going back onto active flight status, you know," he said. "Though God knows with all the work comin' up in the next couple of years, anything's possible. But Harry could sure use someone with the experience over in the Astronaut Office. Between the leftovers and the trainees, we've got close to seventy astros running around here. Not like the old days when Deke and Al had to keep an eye on just a dozen or so of you hell-raisers."
"Don," said Baedecker, "I've just begun work on a book that Dave Muldorff didn't have time to finish and . . ."
"Yep, know all about that," said Gilroth and tapped Baedecker on the upper arm. "There's no rush on this, Dick. Think it over. Get back to me anytime this year. Oh . . . and Dick . . . Dave Muldorff must've thought it was a good idea, you're coming back. I got a letter from him last
November where he mentioned it. Sort of confirmed my own thinking about trying to get some of the old pros back."
Baedecker was digesting this when Tucker and Scott came through the door.
"There you are," said Tucker. "We were planning to take a little ride up to the pad. Want to come along?"
"Yes," said Baedecker. He turned to the departing Gilroth. "Don, thanks for the idea. I'll get back to you."
"Good enough," said the administrator and gave the three of them a two-fingered salute.
Tucker drove them in a green NASA-owned Plymouth for the eight miles up the four-laned Kennedy Parkway to Pad 39-A. The VAB, illuminated from above and below by floodlights, loomed impossibly large as they approached. Baedecker looked up at an American flag painted on one corner of the south face and realized that the flag alone was big enough to play a football game on. Beyond the assembly building, the space vehicle became visible, enclosed in a protective web of gantries. Searchlights cut beams through the humid air, lights glowed throughout the latticework of pipes and girders, and Baedecker thought that the whole thing looked like a gigantic oil derrick filling some interplanetary supertanker.
They passed through security checkpoints, and Tucker drove up the long ramp to the base of the Service and Access Tower. Another guard approached them, saw Tucker, saluted, and stepped back into the shadows. Baedecker and Scott got out of the car and stood looking up at the machine poised above them.
To Baedecker's eye the shuttle—or the SSTS, Space Shuttle Transportation System as the engineers liked to call the entire package of orbiter, external tank, and solid rocket boosters—looked jerry-rigged and awkward, an unlikely coupling of species neither aircraft nor rocket, creating a sort of interim evolutionary form. Baedecker realized, not for the first time, that he was looking at a space-faring platypus. Now it struck him with full force how much the space shuttle—that much-vaunted symbol of America's technology—already had become an assemblage of aging, almost obsolete equipment. Like the older command pilots who flew them, the surviving shuttles carried the dreams of the 1960s and the technology of the 1970s into the unknowns of the 1990s, substituting wisdom from painfully learned lessons for the unlimited energy of youth.
Baedecker liked the look of the rust-colored external fuel tank. It made sense not to burn precious fuel lifting tons of paint into the fringes of space only to have the expendable, thin-skinned tank burn up seconds later, but the effect of such common sense was to make the shuttle look more workaday, almost battered, a good, used pickup truck rather than the classy showroom models flown in earlier space programs. Despite—or perhaps because of—this new-paint-over-the-old-rust feel to the entire ungainly machine, Baedecker realized that if he were still a flying member of the team, he would love the shuttle with the kind of pure and unreasonable passion men usually reserved for wives or lovers.
As if reading Baedecker's mind, Tucker said, "She's beautiful, isn't she?"
"She is that," agreed Baedecker. Without thinking about it, he let his gaze wander to
the aft field joint of the right-hand solid rocket booster. But if there were O-ring demons lurking there, waiting to destroy ship and crew by raking sudden tongues of flame across the hydrogen-primed bomb of the external tank, there was no sign of them today. But then, Baedecker realized, there had been no sign of them to the Challenger crew either.
Around them, men in white went about their business with the insect-intensity of technicians everywhere. Tucker pulled three yellow hard hats from the back seat of the Plymouth and tossed
one to Baedecker and another to Scott. They moved closer and craned their necks to look up again.
"She's something, isn't she," said Tucker.
"Quite a sight," murmured Baedecker.
"Frozen energy," Scott said to himself.
"What's that?" asked Tucker.
"When I was in India," Scott said, speaking so softly that his voice was barely audible above background work noises and the soft chug of a nearby compressor, "I guess, for some reason, I started to think of things . . . to really see things sometimes . . . in terms of energy. People, plants, everything. Used to be, I'd look at a tree and see branches and leaves. Now I tend to see sunlight molded into matter." Scott hesitated, self-conscious. "Anyway, that's what this is . . . just a huge fountain of frozen kinetic energy, waiting to thaw into motion."
"Yeah," said Tucker. "There's energy waiting there, all right. Or at least there will be when the tanks are topped off in the morning. About seven million pounds of thrust when those two strap-on roman candles get lit." He looked at the two of them. "Want to go up? I promised you a look-see, Dick."
"I'll wait here," said Scott. "See you later, Dad."
Baedecker and Tucker rode up in the pad elevator and stepped out into the white room. Half a dozen Rockwell International technicians in white coveralls, white overboots, and white caps were working in the brilliantly illuminated space.
