His visit to Hawthorne was productive. He left with a flash drive full of information about the Falcon heavy, and learned perhaps more than Musk had planned about its current state of readiness. He had Susan book him a charter flight from LA to Chicago. The Space-X people arranged for a helicopter to transport him to LAX.
Ensconced in the plush passenger compartment of a Gulfstream 150, Frank began looking at the Space-X information on his laptop, but soon fell asleep. When he awoke, they were one hour out of Chicago Midway airport. He called Paul, to make sure he was expected.
"Of course!" Paul replied. "I'm already here to meet you. Susan arrived from Dallas a few hours ago. I've been hitting on her mercilessly, but so far she's resisted my undeniable charms." Frank heard a slapping sound and a giggle in the background, and wished he could speed up his arrival.
A wide grin suffused Frank's face as he saw Susan standing with Paul next to a late model Cadillac sedan.
Susan was the kind of woman often described as "handsome." She had never been beautiful, or especially sexy, though Frank often thought that last was more due to her manner than her appearance. Her features were regular, and pleasant. Flecks of gray sprinkled her black hair now, but her face showed only a few laugh lines. She was immaculately groomed, as always; not a single strand of hair dared stray from her control. Her figure was trim, though not angular, with full, rounded breasts, which she made no effort to emphasize.
Frank suddenly realized that he didn't even know how old she was, though he remembered that her birthday was April 13. He looked at her again, appraisingly. Early to mid forties, he decided. He made a mental note to try to find a way to ask her tactfully.
He hadn't seen her in over a year, since they finished up the last details of his "retirement". But he was surprised at how his heart leapt when he saw her. He strode up to her with a huge smile, and stopped suddenly, a confused look on his face, as he realized he'd almost swept her into his arms. He reminded himself that theirs was strictly a business relationship, and he had no business touching her. Then he suddenly realized that he wished that weren't true.
He flushed deeply, lost in confusion. Then he got hold of himself, and his professional smile appeared as he greeted her warmly. But he could have sworn there was a touch of disappointment in her eyes as they did the typical business hug and cheek-kiss.
Frank was glad they had almost an hour's ride ahead in Chicago traffic; he had been unprepared for the rush of emotion Susan's appearance had touched off. He was off-balance and confused, and he would need the time to gain back his equilibrium, and to try to figure out just what had happened. He didn't really feel that way about Susan, did he? Well, he had been thinking a lot recently about how he missed her calm competence, her intelligence, and her humor. And, yes, the sway of her hips as she walked. But sex? Love? He decided he needed to seriously consider whether he wanted a . . . well, a romantic relationship with Susan, and if so, how to do it without putting the unfair pressure of an employer on her. Indeed, he had a lot of thinking to do.
Susan, though, was her usual calm, competent self. It was she who had decided to rent a limo instead of using Paul's car. She was sure they would want to talk on the way to Paul's home. She was, as usual, correct.
Paul pulled the divider window closed to isolate the driver, and then said, "Frank, there are some great new rocket motors out there, and we can even get ion engines. But none of the current crop have been made to lift something as heavy as Shuttle, and everything that is big enough is 'retired' and out of production. It's not looking good.
"Well," Frank said, "Spaceship 1 was launched from an aircraft. If you could lift your ship to 35 or 40 thousand feet before lighting off the rockets, you could save a lot of onboard fuel. The fuel in the lift plane wouldn't matter."
Paul shook his head. "Everybody since the nazis has played with that idea. I'm afraid it just won't work."
But the only other options Paul could come up with was either buying a launch from the Russians or ESA, or an ion engine.
Frank shook his head. "We may end up buying a couple of launches," Frank said. "But I don't want to buy the launch of the ship itself. As soon as we try to schedule a launch for a ship, all hell's going to break loose. Let's not give them any head starts." As for the ion engine, Paul admitted that current designs lacked sufficient capacity for lift off, although they might prove useful for the rest of the mission.
David had been struggling with the problem of a hull for the spacecraft. He hadn't been having a great deal of luck, either. "Shuttle was the only design that had been a true spaceship, and not just a capsule," David reported dispiritedly by phone. "I've even asked discreetly how much a new shuttle hull would cost. I didn't believe the estimate." He shook his head with a sour chuckle. "To show you how desperate I am, I've been checking into whether we could modify an aircraft fuselage into an acceptable space ship."
Frank's eyebrows raised. "Do you think that's practical?"
David shrugged. "Hell, I don't know. Maybe something like the SR-71; that's almost a space ship already. But it's designed to be mostly engine. Face it, that's a desperation move. But we damned sure won't be able to pry a shuttle away from any of the museums that got one."
Frank frowned. "I thought I remembered that the Russians built a shuttle, too."
"That's right!" David shouted. "I've got to call Sergei" he hung up the phone.
Paul and Frank continued discussing the Russian Shuttle. Paul didn't even remember it; he began frantically pounding his computer keyboard. Silence dragged.
Chapter 2
David called back in less than an hour, sounding embarrassed but happy. "I forgot the time difference," he confessed. "On the bright side, though, I learned some great new Russian curse words!"
Frank grinned. "Good for you. I never got past nye kulturni. That always seemed to do the job for me. Who's Sergei, and what did you find out?"
"Sergei Andorovich. Works at Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Russian space center. I'm planning to recruit him when I go to Russia. Oh, by the way, I need to go to Russia. Sergei's promised me a punch in the nose for not remembering the Buran shuttle. Especially since they built almost a dozen of them."
"Really? I don't even remember hearing about it ever flying."
David's grin was wide. "Well, it did, and it didn't. It flew once. Did two orbits. But it's the only spacecraft ever to orbit and soft land under remote control. Nobody ever took it into space."
"Why not? Didn't it work?"
"The Soviet Union fell apart is what happened. Things got kinda busy in Russia, and space exploration was 'way down the list of priorities. And then a few years later a hangar collapsed and destroyed the one that orbited."
Frank was getting excited. "Tell me about the rest of them."
"Well, I can't give you all the details, yet. I haven't had a chance to do any Internet research. But it seems they built quite a few of them for testing, and training, and of course for later use. Sergei's not sure what happened to all of them, but he thinks there's a couple of them at Baikonur, and he says there's even one in Gorky Park in Moscow. They use it as an attraction, an amusement ride."
Frank was really excited, now. "So, how soon can you leave for Russia?"
There was a wide grin in David's voice. "As soon as you can get me a visa and book me a flight!"
"Ah," Frank replied. "For that I must invoke the mighty magic of Susan Andrews. I wouldn't be surprised if she turned out to know President-For-Life Putin personally!"
It took even the magical Susan almost a week to complete the arrangements and book David's fight to Moscow.
It was yet another week before the phone in Frank's Chicago hotel rang. "For your information," said the voice on the other end, "Baikonur Cosmodrome is not in Russia! It's in Kazakhstan, a whole 'nother visa. And the town isn't Baikonur, it's Tyuratam. Baikonur is just the space center."