by Ben Bova
“Only one problem with your theory,” Jackson said, his voice gentle, almost fatherly. “There’s absolutely no evidence that it’s right.”
Evidence
Knowles leaned back in his complaining plastic chair.
“No evidence,” he echoed.
His tone still mild, Jackson said, “If somebody deliberately weakened the oxy line, all the evidence of his tampering was blown to hell and gone by the explosion.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“It’s a reasonable idea, Ike, but without evidence it’s just an idea. A hypothesis. A hypothesis that you can’t prove.”
“Whoever did it was damned clever,” Knowles acknowledged.
“The explosion he caused destroyed the evidence that he caused it,” Jackson mused. With a brief nod, he agreed, “Damned clever.”
“How do we find out if the idea is right?” Jake asked.
Jackson said, “As I understand it, the FBI has looked into the personnel files of everybody on the launch team.”
“Everybody who came within a hundred yards of the bird,” Knowles said.
“And they found nothing suspicious?”
“A couple of the technicians admitted to smoking weed in their spare time.” Knowles looked and sounded disgusted.
“That’s it?”
Nodding, the former astronaut said, “Far as the FBI could find, nobody on the launch crew got a sudden influx of cash. Nobody bought a new house or ran off to Cuba.”
“Nobody was bribed,” Jake said.
Jackson sighed wearily. “And any evidence of tampering was blown to hell by the explosion.”
“Pretty much,” said Knowles.
Slowly, Jackson pushed his chair back from the table and got to his feet. “Then I’d say we’re wasting our time here. We ought to be man enough to admit we’re up against a blank wall.”
Knowles exploded, “Dammit, somebody deliberately blew up that rocket! He’s still on the launch crew! He can blow up the next launch! Maybe kill people!”
Another launch failure could cripple Nick Piazza’s operation, Jake knew. It could throw the entire space plan into the garbage heap.
“We’ve got to find out who did this,” Jake said.
With a wry smile, Jackson said, “I know. But until you show me how, we’re wasting our time here.”
Jake looked across the office, to the clock on the wall. It read 8:45.
“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “Time to go home.” He too rose to his feet.
Knowles glared up at the two of them. “I know I’m right. Some little bastard fucked up the launch.”
“Knowing is one thing, Ike,” Jackson said, softly, kindly. “Proving it is something else.”
* * *
Jake phoned Tami as he walked out onto K Street and tried to hail a cab.
“You’re all right?” she asked, her voice high with apprehension.
“Yeah, sure,” Jake answered. “I’ll tell you about it when I get home.”
“But you’re all right.”
“I’m fine, hon. See you in a few minutes.” And he felt a warm, elated glow. She cares, he told himself. She really loves me.
Jake explained his impromptu meeting with Knowles and Jackson to Tami over dinner: leftover lamb chops from the night before.
“Knowles is right,” Tami concluded. “Whoever did it will strike again.”
“Maybe,” Jake said. “Nick ought to beef up security for his next launch.”
“And strengthen that liquid oxygen piping.”
Shaking his head, Jake said, “That would add weight to the launcher. You want to keep a rocket’s weight down as much as you can.”
“But—”
Jake’s cell phone broke into “Stars and Stripes Forever.” He yanked it out of his pocket. Nick Piazza’s somber, determined face filled the tiny screen.
Without preamble, Piazza said, “Ike just told me about your meeting.”
“We didn’t accomplish much, I’m afraid,” said Jake.
“More than you think,” Piazza said grimly. “I’m replacing the whole launch crew for our next shot.”
“The whole crew?” Jake blurted.
“Damned right. If one of my people caused the explosion, he won’t be around to screw up the next one.”
Jake mentally added “or she.” But to Piazza he said, “Nick, won’t it take time to train a new crew?”
“I don’t care how long it takes, I’m not going to give that motherfucking saboteur another chance to screw me.”
“When are you scheduled to launch again?” Jake asked.
“Not until the end of May. That’s enough time to train a new crew, more or less.”
Jake thought, The end of May. The California primary’s the first Tuesday of June. If there’s another explosion it’ll ruin our chances of taking California.
My god! Jake realized with a shock. I’m thinking like a politician!
Campaigning
The whirlwind of Tomlinson’s campaign rushed on: speeches, interviews, another debate—this time with Sebastian and Tomlinson alone on the stage, facing each other.
Sebastian kept hammering on the federal loan guarantee question. “It’s a giveaway, nothing less,” he insisted. “A welfare giveaway for billionaires. It means that you, the taxpayer, will be held responsible for the billions of dollars that this pie-in-the-sky space program is going to cost.”
Tomlinson countered, “The loan guarantee program will allow our new efforts in space to be financed by private investors, not by your tax dollars. It’s an idea that’s worked before, and it can and will work again.”
Sebastian took the New York primary. And Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Tomlinson won Delaware and Rhode Island.
O’Donnell sneered, “With those two and a couple of bucks you just might be able to buy a coffee at Starbucks.”
But a week later Tomlinson scored a solid victory in Indiana, and the following week took both Nebraska and Oregon.
At campaign headquarters, Pat Lovett stared thoughtfully at the big wall screen showing the various states in red and blue.
Shaking his head, the campaign manager muttered, “It’s not following the usual pattern. Frank’s winning in the Midwest and far west. He’s getting the farmers and the high-tech geeks.”
Standing beside him, Jake suggested, “Maybe it’s a new coalition forming. Like FDR, when he put together the Old South and the northern big city machines.”
Lovett stared at Jake. “You’ve been reading political history.”
“A little,” Jake admitted.
Quite seriously, Lovett said, “If you’ve got time for that, we haven’t been working you hard enough.”
And he walked away, leaving Jake standing there in front of the map, feeling somewhere between dumbfounded and annoyed.
* * *
June began with a heat wave in Washington, daily high temperatures inching up into the low nineties, humidity high enough to curl women’s hair and take the crease out of men’s trousers. The California primary was less than a week away. And two days before that, Nick Piazza was scheduled to launch another Astra Super at Spaceport America, in the White Sands desert of New Mexico.
Jake felt torn between his desire to see the launch and his superstitious fear that if he was there, in person, he’d witness another disaster.
Nick Piazza had no such worries. “I’ll send a plane to pick you up in Washington, fly you out there, and get you back home before the California primary.”
On the wall screen of Jake’s office, Piazza looked relaxed, totally at ease, as if this next launch was guaranteed to succeed. Jake felt decidedly otherwise.
“Your new launch crew is ready to go?” he asked.
“Ready, willing, and eager,” Piazza replied, almost jovially. “They’re gung ho.”
Feeling reluctant, Jake heard himself say, “Okay, I’ll fly out the day before the launch and return right after it.”
�
�You won’t stay for the after-launch party?” Piazza asked.
Shaking his head, Jake said, “Don’t have the time to spare, Nick.”
Grinning broadly, Piazza said, “Work is the curse of the drinking man, Jake.”
Jake smiled back weakly at him. Just get the damned rocket off the ground successfully, he pleaded silently. The partying doesn’t mean a damned thing. Getting the bird into orbit is what’s important.
* * *
Tami insisted on going, too.
“One way or another, this is going to be a huge story,” she said. Then imitating a previous presidential contender, she stressed, “Huuuge.”
Jake laughed and cleared it with Piazza.
Senator Tomlinson was campaigning in California, drawing big crowds in the high-tech Silicon Valley area and the Southern California aerospace industry region. But the turnout for him in Los Angeles itself was disappointingly small; Lovett’s people had to work hard to make the crowd look big enough for the TV news cameras.
The afternoon of their flight to New Mexico, Jake and Tami rode in one of Senator Tomlinson’s limousines to Reagan National Airport. It was early afternoon, and traffic through Washington’s sweltering streets wasn’t as bad as it would become in a couple of hours.
“We’ll be there in good time,” Jake muttered as he sat beside Tami in the air-conditioned limo.
“And we gain two hours from the time difference,” she added.
Jake nodded. “Nick Piazza told me a while ago that he likes to spend New Year’s Eve in New Mexico. He said he can watch the ball go down in Times Square and it’s only ten o’clock in Albuquerque.”
“You mean he goes to sleep then?” Tami asked. “That’s sacrilegious!”
“That’s Nick,” Jake said, with a chuckle.
* * *
When they got out of the limousine, at the hangar where Piazza’s sleek, swept-wing Cessna Citation was waiting, Jake was surprised to see Billy Trueblood standing by the twin-jet plane.
As they shook hands, the Native American grinned happily and told Jake, “Nick needed somebody to sit in as copilot on this flight.”
Surprised, Jake asked, “You’re qualified for a Citation?”
“Got my license and nearly fifty hours in the air.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Trueblood’s grin faded. “There’s a lot of things about me that you don’t know.”
Jake and Tami followed Trueblood up the aluminum ladder and into the plane’s posh interior.
“Take any seat you like,” Billy said. “It’s all yours, this flight.” And he headed up into the cockpit, closing the windowless door behind him.
Jake and Tami sat side by side in a pair of the commodious swiveling chairs that lined the passenger compartment. The plane’s aisle separated their seats, but they were close enough to reach out and hold hands.
A tractor towed them out of the hangar and the twin-jet engines spooled up. Jake felt the plane tremble like a retriever dog catching the scent of a bird, heard the muted roar of the engines. Then they taxied out to the end of the runway, raced forward until the runway markers were a blur, and lifted up into the sky.
Trueblood’s voice came through the cabin speakers, sounding calm, professional. “We’ll be flying at forty-eight thousand feet, well above the weather. Average speed will be five hundred miles per hour. Next stop, Spaceport America.”
Jake unconsciously frowned.
“Something wrong?” Tami asked. The plane’s acoustical insulation was so good that she could speak in a normal conversational tone.
“We’re supposed to be going to Albuquerque,” Jake said. “We’re staying at the DoubleTree overnight.”
Tami shrugged. “I suppose that’s what Billy meant.”
“I guess,” Jake said, uncertainly.
They climbed through a layer of clouds, bouncing slightly in the mild turbulence, then smoothed out into a clear blue sky. Beneath them a sea of clouds undulated gracefully, above them was nothing but sunshine.
“If you go high enough,” Jake said, smiling, “you can find the sunshine.”
“Philosophy? From you?” Tami teased.
“I’m a man of hidden talents,” Jake replied.
Jake had just cranked his seat back for a nap when his cell phone started playing Sousa. Fumbling it out of his pocket, Jake saw that the caller was Nick Piazza.
“Hello, Nick,” he said to the image on the little screen. “We’re on our way—”
“Is Billy with you?” Piazza asked urgently.
“Yeah, he’s copiloting the plane.”
“No, he’s not. He’s flying it by himself and he doesn’t know how to land it.”
Suicide Flight
“What?” Jake tried to jump to his feet but his seat belt restrained him.
“The airport people found the regular pilot unconscious in the hangar’s locker room,” Piazza was saying, his words spilling out fast, in a torrent.
“Billy’s flying the plane by himself?”
“He doesn’t know how to land it!” Piazza repeated.
“Jesus!”
“He hasn’t answered my calls and he won’t reply to the traffic controllers. Let me talk to him!”
Glancing at Tami, who looked stricken, Jake unclicked his seat belt and hurried up the aisle to the cockpit door. It was locked.
Pounding on the door, Jake yelled, “Billy! It’s Nick! He wants to talk to you!”
“No deal,” came Trueblood’s muffled voice from the other side of the door. “Tell him I said good-bye.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Jake yelled.
Down the aisle, Tami’s face looked ashen. She sat in her seat as if petrified.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Trueblood replied. “I’m gonna crash this bird into the Spaceport America building, wipe out Astra Corporation’s control center. Put an end to this rocket launching business.”
“But you’ll kill us!” Jake hollered. “You’ll kill yourself!”
“That’s right. More publicity. Author of the space plan dies in Spaceport America crash. We’ll get plenty of publicity.”
“Why?” Jake shrieked. “Why the hell do you want to do this?”
“To get back at Nick. Get back at all you palefaces. First you took our land. Then you took us, took me. Now you’re going out to take everything in the solar system. The Moon. Mars. It’s got to stop, man. I’m stopping it. Now.”
“That’s crazy!”
“So I’m crazy. So was Sitting Bull, and Red Cloud, and Geronimo. And Crazy Horse, he was the craziest of them all, I guess.”
Jake glanced at the window. The plane was flying straight and level, okay so far, but Trueblood was rushing toward death and he was going to take Jake and Tami with him.
“You said you wanted to get back at Nick. Why? He’s been like a father to you.”
“More than that, man. A lot more than that.”
“He took you in when you were an orphan, for god’s sake. He’s made a good life for you.”
“Yeah, sure. He loves me to death.”
Even through the locked cockpit door, Jake heard the bitterness in Trueblood’s voice.
“Loves you to death?”
“Yeah. Whenever he wants to. Whenever he gets the urge. Only now I’m too old for him. Now he wants a younger kid.”
Tami came up beside Jake, wide-eyed with fear and sudden understanding. “Nick’s molested you?”
Trueblood laughed shakily. “That’s the polite way of saying it. He’s been fucking me since I was eight years old.”
“Oh my god,” Jake gasped.
“And now he wants to dump me. I don’t know if I should be glad or sad.”
“Nick is a pedophile?” Tami asked.
“Does a camel have humps?” Trueblood countered.
Desperate for anything that might change Trueblood’s attitude, Jake asked, “But why should you kill yourself?”
“Why not? Sorry to take you wi
th me, Jake, but it’ll make an even bigger story.”
“Nick’s the one you’re mad at,” said Tami.
“Yeah. And the one I love. Crazy world, isn’t it?”
“Don’t do it, Billy,” Jake pleaded. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
“That’s not a helluva lot to look forward to.”
Jake and Tami argued with Trueblood through the locked cockpit door as the plane flew smoothly toward New Mexico. The clouds that had blanketed the eastern states petered out and they could see the great Midwestern farmlands, green and fertile, stretching from horizon to horizon. Then the mountains started to rise, with pockets of snow still visible here and there. Rivers flowed, glistening in the sun, until the land turned dry and brown.
Jake’s throat felt raw from shouting at Trueblood. Tami looked truly frightened, her eyes darting here and there, seeking a way out, an escape.
Trueblood refused to talk to Piazza, or anyone. “I’m finished talking. I’ve made up my mind,” he said.
Even in the cell phone’s minuscule screen Piazza looked frantic. “I never intended to hurt him! I didn’t think it would come to this!”
But it has come to this, Jake replied silently. This kid’s going to kill himself and Tami and me with him. A new thought popped into his mind: Has Nick told the launch crew to get the hell out of the launch center? And the other people in the building?
“Better get back to your seats,” Trueblood’s voice commanded over the plane’s intercom speakers. “Strap in.”
What the hell for? Jake asked himself. But he took Tami by the hand and led her back to their seats.
“He’s going to kill us,” Tami half whispered, her voice trembling.
Jake nodded. Then, instead of getting into the seat, he marched back to the cockpit door.
“So you’re going to let Nick win,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re going to let Nick win. You’re going to show the world that the Zunis are just another bunch of dumbbell terrorists with nothing better to do than slaughter innocent men and women.”
Silence from the cockpit for a few heartbeats. Then, “We’re not terrorists.”
“That’s not what the news media will say. I can see the headline, ‘Native American Terrorist Kills Himself and a Few Dozen Others.’”
