“Excuse me?”
“Our president, Andrei Kosachyov, has become involved, and when he discovered that NASA was going to try and probably fail, and that we were getting ready to do this for you for a price, he directed us to cancel the charge and be the ones to pluck your people back as a humanitarian gesture.”
“Really?” Richard replies, thinking of his two million dollars now in a Moscow bank. “Without charge?”
There is a pause and then brief unrestrained laughter. “Yes, Richard, without charge, and your deposit is already being wired back to you. Good for you, no? Bad for me. No commission.”
“Hey, I can take care of that.”
“No charge means no charge, but we are on schedule now. I thought you needed to know.”
“Thank you, Vasily!”
“Oh, one other thing. The Japanese Space Agency’s Hiragawa just called me. He said the Chinese are about to make a similar decision to help.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No. It may get crowded up there.”
“Well, aren’t you guys going to coordinate?”
“If coordinate means defer to them, the answer is no. We have our orders. We will get your people. This is no time for the Chinese to be messing around.”
People first,Ronald Porter thinks to himself, smiling. It’s the reason he came aboard as Chief of Staff, jumping political parties for a man who keeps earning his respect.
The President doesn’t notice Ron’s smile. He’s talking to one of his Secret Service agents whose wife has just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, comforting him as best he can.
They’re passing over Bolling Air Force Base on the east bank of the Potomac as the President turns his attention back to why Ron has decided to hop aboard a routine Air Force Oneflight to New York.
“So how is the Commerce Committee going to vote?” the President asks.
“That’s… they’re with us. But there’s something else we need to discuss.” He hands the President a one-page summary of an intelligence report less than an hour old.
“What’s this, Ron? The Russians?”
“Our buddies in Moscow have decided to ride to the rescue and go after the ASA spacecraft.”
“A special launch?”
“Actually, they’re moving up a scheduled ISS resupply mission.”
“Don’t they know we’re going to send the shuttle?”
“They don’t believe we can.”
“Well, hell, Ron, get someone on the phone to set them straight. Have Shear make the call.”
“It all started with Kosachyov a few hours ago. He’s determined to be the white knight. So, should we stand down?”
“Cancel our effort?”
“Yes. I talked to Shear. He heartily advises it.”
“I’m sure he does. I had to order him to get cracking.”
“He may have a solid point.”
“About safety?”
“Safety and cost. As he says, we only have two shuttles left, and when you push something on an emergency basis, you cut corners and take additional risks.”
The President sits back in thought, his eyes watching the forested beauty below as the Marine Onepilots begin the descent to the presidential ramp at Andrews, where one of the two specially built Boeing 747s used as Air Force Oneis waiting.
Suddenly he’s forward again, in Ron’s face.
“There’s a principle here, Ron, and in my view it’s worth the risk. One, we protect our own, civilian or government. Two, we may have only two shuttles left, but we don’t have to plead for help because we’re afraid to use them. Three, this goes to the heart of American trust of and pride in our capabilities, and in NASA, and four, I know what Kosachyov is up to. There is a commercial purpose behind it I can’t ignore. This is like letting Airbus snag a U.S. Air Force contract, something that will never happen on my watch.”
“So, we fly?”
He’s nodding. “Damn right we fly. Unless there’s a solid, no-foolin’ safety concern beyond the routine.”
“I’ll tell Shear.”
“Oh, we need to do more than that.” The President’s already pulling the receiver out of its cradle in his armrest.
“You’re calling Moscow?”
A naughty grin that would fit a much younger man breaks across the President’s face.
The connection to the Web address carrying the alleged transmission from space has apparently frozen, and Alastair thinks he knows why.
The e-mails pouring into his own mailbox from addresses he doesn’t recognize have overloaded it.
And now the frozen transmission.
He pulls up another screen and calls up a bulletin board he’s found, a site for people nuts about space travel. Sure enough, the message from the man calling himself Kip is there, too, and still actively scrolling!
Right! They’re retransmitting it.
Another excited message from Becky has made it to an alternate mailbox and he opens it quickly.
So why are all my messages to you on the normal channel getting bounced? I don’t want to see another of those @%!^#$ “Mailer-Daemon” things! If you get this, let me know. Your stranded spaceman’s transmission is exploding. Someone’s retransmitting it everywhere and I’ve already seen it on eight sites. And Ali-boy, I think the poor guy IS really up there and is really, REALLY screwed! And the story he’s telling is so amazingly rad.
Me
Alastair checks the time, amazed to find it’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. He feels like he just sat down. The only light on in the room is the gooseneck over his keyboard, but suddenly he feels the need for more. It’s chilly and he’s already pulled on a sweater, but it’s not enough. He snaps on the ceiling light, aware of how closely his dad monitors the electrical bill, but there’s still too little heat and he pulls a small ceramic heater from the closet, the one he’s been told never to use, before sitting back down at the keyboard.
Whatever all this is, he decides, it is way more than he can handle now. But there is one thing he hasn’t done yet that just has to be accomplished. He checks his notepad for the e-mail address he wrote down of the company in California that launched the spacecraft, and writes as simple a message as he can.
Dear American Space Adventures,
I don’t know if it’s real or not, but there’s a guy saying he’s a passenger in your spaceship Intrepidand he’s sending a continuous letter into the Internet, and I’m forwarding the Web site address. It’s frozen up on me, but you can see it being retransmitted at two other places. I’m sending a file with my record of the first part of what came in.
If there really is a problem, I hope everything turns out okay.
Your friend, Alastair Wood.
Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia
Jeez, what would it feel like to be up there all alone?he wonders, knowing that some of the words he first read—words he thought were part of a scam—might hold the answer to that.
Maybe he should reread them.
But first, he decides, he’ll take a look at his jammed-up mailbox. He opens the long list and pages to the latest one, not believing the address: ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, his national network.
Dear Sir or Madam: We have been forwarded a copy of an e-mail you sent to several friends last night with a Web address that apparently is the only live transmission from a stranded space tourist on an American craft in orbit. If this is true, and you are the one who somehow found it, we would very much appreciate the opportunity to interview you this morning as soon as possible. We would like very much to know how you managed to come across such a transmission, and how you reacted. Won’t you please call us at our toll-free number in Sydney? Wherever you are in Australia, we can send a camera crew to you.