"Let's hope so," said Evelyn.
The chaplain had been munching a piece of meat loaf. He swallowed it, finished off a container of apple juice, and got up to go. "Got to get back to my work station," he said, looking pleased with himself. "By the way, they've got one of the Moonbase people manning communications at the Orbital Lab."
"Really?" asked Evelyn. "Who?"
"Andrea Bellwether."
"I don't think I know her," said Evelyn.
"Is she by any chance related to Frank Bellwether?" asked Cochran.
"His daughter," said the chaplain.
"If we're going to talk about omens," said Cochran, "that's not a good one."
Frank Bellwether, the pilot who'd bounced. Who had come in with damaged instruments and a damaged Ranger, and who had tried to insert himself into the atmosphere at the precise angle needed to maneuver between a ricochet and a burn-up, and who had ricocheted. Beyond any hope of rescue.
There'd been talk about the incident recently, of using a Lowell-type vessel to recover the Ranger, which in its lonely solar orbit was still visible on the world's radar screens. But the consensus seemed to be that it was better to leave the ship where it was. Evelyn shared that view.
"Nobody's talking omens," the chaplain said, a surprising edge to his voice. Out of character. Evelyn wondered if he was beginning to feel the pressure. SSTO Berlin Fight Deck, Hartsfield Maintenance Facility. 1:43 P.M.
"Try it now, Gruder."
The flight engineer looked down at the yellow box they'd mounted on the bulkhead by his hip, and pressed the black button. This time, lamps lit up and machinery moved beneath the deck. The engineers who were crowded together on the hangar floor, where they could see the undercarriage, jabbed fists upward and shook hands with each other. "That's good, Gruder," said Kathleen's voice in his earphones. Kathleen was down below with the engineers. "It was a loose cable. We'll put the panels back, try it one more time, and we should be ready to go."
The SSTO was on a cradle so the pitons wouldn't dig up the hangar floor.
Gruder nodded to his captain.
Willem finished going over his preliminaries and glanced out at the engineers. One of them was a deliciously attractive blonde.
"When we come back," said Gruder, "we will be heroes. Women like that will be our oyster. They will open to us on request." He grinned and the captain grinned back. It was, of course, quite true.
The ground crews brought in three flatbeds of brown earth. They drove them under the spacecraft, positioning one beneath each of the three pitons.
Kathleen spoke to him: "Okay, Gruder, try it again."
He hit the button and felt the spikes come down. Felt them dig into the dirt, felt the spacecraft lift slightly as weight was transferred from the landing gear, watched the lamps stay amber until a string of lights indicated the pitons were fully extended. Gruder touched a presspad and flanges pushed out in three directions from the head of each piton, anchoring it. If necessary, he had a break switch that would jettison the units and allow the SSTO to lift away from the surface. The break switch was hidden inside the box to prevent its being accidentally activated.
"Retract," said Kathleen.
They would not be able to retract on the Possum, where the pitons would be anchored in rock. But here, it was no problem. Gruder keyed the command. The flanges released their grip and the pitons withdrew into the mounts. The undercarriage creaked.
They went through the exercise a second time, after which the pitons received a thorough cleaning and lubrication. The engineers, satisfied, walked away, and Kathleen, after shaking hands with a couple of them, left the group and returned to the plane.
"Berlin," said a voice in Gruder's earphones, "installation is complete. We are ready to move you out."
Kathleen came onto the flight deck and took her seat. "You know," she said, "I wish they'd come up with something more appropriate than 'Operation Rainbow.'"
"Why?" said Willem. "It's a reference to the aftermath of the flood. Everything turned out all right."
"Only for Noah and his family. Everybody else drowned."
Kathleen was a distant cousin of Gruder's, although he hadn't known that until they began working together. Both were from the Bremerhaven area, both had flown combat jets, and both had the same birthday, although Gruder was a year younger. They were fond of thinking their lives were linked, and that time would either uncover or produce other parallels.
They already had one: They were both on the same historic mission.
The earth-haulers reappeared and left the hangar. Now a pair of tractors tied onto the spacecraft and began to draw her outside into the bright afternoon daylight.
"Tower," said Willem, "Berlin is ready for departure."
"Roger, Berlin."
The tractors connected them to the SSTO track, which hauled them inside the Transatmospheric Terminal and began moving them slowly toward the launch tunnel. They passed the boarding platforms, which ordinarily would have been crowded with passengers.
Willem started the engines.
"Berlin" said the tower, "you are locked and loaded. Go in sixty seconds."
Gruder looked at his watch, but failed to note the time. All the women you could possibly want. He wondered what Kathleen was thinking.
CNN NEWSBREAK SPECIAL REPORT. 2:05 P.M.
"This is Mark Able reporting from the mouth of the Transatmospheric Tunnel outside Rico, Georgia, where the first space plane is ready to launch…"
4.
Along the Chattahoochee River, west of Rico, Georgia. 2:11 P.M.
Steve Gallagher had pulled over to the side of the road to watch the launch. He liked space hardware as much as he liked military hardware. There was something in the cold, gray, utilitarian vehicles moving between Earth and Moon that stirred the depths of his soul in a way that no woman, no cause, ever could. And among the LTA's assorted buses, trucks, and ferries, nothing made his blood race like the Single Stage To Orbit space plane, the rocket-powered vessel with its sleek wings folding back while it raced into a moonrise. It genuinely hurt him to contemplate destroying one of them. He hoped that the free men and women of the future would appreciate the sacrifice he was making in their name.
The radio was saying launch was imminent. Tad opened his door, got out, and turned toward the east. "Should come right up over those trees," he said.
The trees were about fifty yards away, lining one side of a schoolyard. There were kids running around a circular track, others simply chasing one another, skipping rope, playing games. The colonel could see movement in the classrooms. "You'd think they'd bring everybody out here to watch," he said. "The government claims it's saving the world, and they don't even care enough to inspire the kids to watch." He'd always understood that the people who worked for the government weren't individually vindictive. It was the institution that corrupted them, the institution that was mindless and overbearing. He'd seen enough TV interviews to know that the feds really believed the propaganda they put out, really believed they were on the side of the angels. But sometimes that faith in human nature was shaken, and he wondered whether they were not individually malignant and knew exactly what they were doing. How else did you explain the fact that they claimed the spacecraft of Operation Rainbow were going to save the world and then failed to rally the kids to watch the effort?
Maybe everyone knew it was a facade. They knew, but they went along because they saw no other course. It was like Orwell, except that Big Brother had turned out to be a lot more subtle, a lot more insidious, than anyone had expected.
"There it is," said Tad.
The space plane sailed out over the trees, riding twin contrails, ascending sharply toward a bank of glistening white clouds. Then they heard the sound of its passing, a distant rumble, like the sea breaking on a remote shore, its volume descending and then rising again. A few of the kids turned to watch.