The reporter from CNN was the first with his hand up. Paul nodded to him.
“You are charging your customers twenty-five million dollars per seat—that’s only one hundred twenty-five million total for the trip. Yet NASA is spending billions of dollars for its landing mission. Why such a big difference? How are you able to do so much yet charge your customers so little?”
Childers motioned to Gesling and O’Conner that he wanted to answer this one, and he stepped up with a smile on his face.
“Well, there are really two reasons for this. First, the American dollar has rebounded in the last decade from the economic recession of the decade before. Had we done this ten years ago, the price would have been double or maybe triple the cost. And because we’re using technology that NASA already developed, we don’t have to pay as much to develop our own. Did I say two reasons? Okay, really three. The first few flights don’t have to make money. It is no secret that I have money. Lots of money. I’m rich, and I choose to spend my money underwriting the company and its bottom line. We’ve got a solid business plan that will result in us making back my investment and then some. It just won’t happen during the first few years of operation. But in ten years, when we are ready to make our first landing on the Moon, charging one hundred million per seat, we’ll be turning a hefty profit for our major investors—and that is mostly me. So you see, I plan to make more money off this little adventure.”
“Mr. Childers! Mike Mahan, Fox News. What about the risk? NASA is conducting a robotic test run before sending any people. So far, it looks like it is going well. Aren’t you taking a big risk by not doing something similar? What if you lost a crew?”
“We will have one more test flight. It will be orbital. We’re going to go through all the steps up to departing for the Moon. But the real answer to this one is directly related to the first question. If we were to make Dreamscape robotic, not only would Captain Gesling be out of a job, but it would have perhaps doubled our development costs. No, we’ve flown people to orbit and kept them there for longer than this Moon trip will take. We know how the ship will respond, and she’s well designed. We also know that we will take advantage of something called ‘Lunar Free Return,’ which will pretty much guarantee that the ship and her passengers will come home—just like NASA did on Apollo 13. We’re managing the risks, and my customers will be safe and have one fantastic vacation—providing the laws of physics remain as they always have.” Childers spoke with confidence and authority and a tinge of humor in his voice. And he believed what he was saying as he said it through a toothy smile.
The next half hour or so of the press conference was filled with questions about the training of the passengers and the various regulatory hurdles Space Excursions had had to overcome in order to send people to the Moon independently of any government. Childers fielded most of them, leaving only the technical questions for Gesling to answer. Near the end of the allotted time, the reporter from the China Daily raised his hand.
“Mr. Childers. Mr. Childers, please. Does not your company do business with NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense? Is not the reason you’re not concerned with making money because they are, in fact, paying for this mission as part of an American attempt to secure the Moon and the mineral resources there for itself? Are you not a front for the American government under the guise of commercialism?”
Childers, Gesling, and the unflappable Caroline O’Conner were all taken aback by this one. They weren’t certain if the man was serious or some sort of nut. Both O’Conner and Gesling looked to Childers to respond. And respond he did. Paul smiled at the fire in his boss’s voice.
“With all due respect, my company is my company. Yes, we do business for NASA and for other agencies within the U.S. government. They, like the Dreamscape passengers, are my customers. All of this is public knowledge, and I am proud of what we do and for whom we do it. Yes, I have government contracts. But they don’t come close to paying for this spacecraft. Hell, the government cost me more damned money in legal issues than building that space rocket!”
He calmed down a little and continued. “There is no conspiracy surrounding what we do nor with this trip. It is what it is. I’m in business to make money and give my customers one hell of a ride. I hope that answers your question, and, as far as I am concerned, this news conference is over.”
With that, Childers walked from the stage, still clearly agitated by the last question. Childers was more agitated, in fact, than Gesling would have thought possible.
“Damn,” Paul leaned toward O’Conner and whispered. “What’s up with that?” Gesling was surprised that a question most in the room would consider balderdash would get such a response from Childers—perhaps giving it more credibility than it deserved.
“Search me,” O’Conner responded with a shrug as she moved toward the podium to more formally close out the news conference. “I don’t know, but I need to wrap this up on a more positive note or that will be the question everyone here will remember—and we clearly don’t want that being the sound bite on tonight’s news!”
I dunno, I kinda liked it. Shows we’ve got balls, Paul thought to himself. If he’d been holding the pointer, he could have smacked it in his hands like a billy club for effect. He stood sternly anyway and glared with a slight grin at the press members—the boss’s enforcer. He decided then and there that he liked Childers and had every intention of keeping his job and his boss happy, no matter how annoying the passengers got.
Chapter 8
During the tour, while Caroline O’Conner was charming the four dozen or so reporters and their accompanying camera crews with her knowledge of Space Excursions, Dreamscape, and space exploration in general, Gesling’s telephone buzzed in his pocket, almost startling him. Somewhat annoyed, he took a deep breath and then fished it out of his pocket. Paul thumbed the center key and then the number key to unlock the thing, and then it dinged at him, saying that he’d received a text message from Childers.
The message read:
after the tour, meet me in my office asap.
Gesling was used to getting boss-grams and didn’t really give it much thought. At that point, he couldn’t imagine that the text message and Childers’s reaction to the question asked by the reporter from the China Daily were related. But he was soon to discover that, unfortunately, they most certainly were. He plopped the phone back in his pocket and ignored it for the time being.
Completing the tour and seeing the reporters to the heavily monitored exit from the Nevada test facility took about another hour and a half. Pual’s stomach croaked at him a time or two and then started in with a full rumble. He had skipped breakfast and by now was ravenously hungry. He debated whether or not to grab a bite before hotfooting it off to Childers’s office. He opted to grab a candy bar and a soda from the break room first. The candy bar at least quieted, if not appeased, the rumble in his stomach. The soda helped, too.
Gary Childers’s Nevada office was not nearly as spectacular as the one in Kentucky. A desk, credenza, and table were the only furniture pieces, and only a few deep-space photographs adorned the walls. By the time Paul got there, he saw that a meeting was already taking place. In the room were Mark Watson, Space Excursions’ chief of security, Helen Jones, the “IT Lady,” who kept the computer network operational, and David Chu, the lead systems engineer for the Dreamscape itself.