“For tourists?”
“Si—Yes. Our company is the very first in the world to offer a space flight adventure.”
“In space?” I repeated.
She nodded and said, “Perhaps Mr. Gunn himself should explain it to you.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to bother him.”
“No bother,” she said sweetly. “He enjoys speaking to the customers.”
She must have pressed a buzzer, because the s. GUNN door popped open and out walked Sam, smiling like a used-car salesman.
The first thing about him to strike me was how short he was. I mean, I’m barely five-five in my flats and Sam was a good two inches shorter than I. He seemed solidly built, though, beneath the colorful flowered short-sleeve shirt and sky-blue slacks he was wearing. Good shoulders, a little thick in the midsection.
His face was, well.. .cute. I thought I saw boyish enthusiasm and charm in his eyes. He certainly didn’t look like your typical drug lord.
“I’m Sam Gunn,” he said to me, sticking his hand out over the counter. “At your service.”
I got the impression he had to stand on tiptoe to get his arm over the counter.
“Ramona Perkins,” I said taking his hand in mine. He had a firm, friendly grip. With my free hand I activated the microchip recorder in my shoulder bag.
“You’re interested in a space adventure?” Sam asked, opening the little gate at the end of the counter and ushering me through.
“I really don’t know,” I said, as if I were taking the first step on the Yellow Brick Road. “It all seems so new and different.”
“Come into my office and let me explain it to you.”
Sam’s office was much more posh than the outer room. He had a big modernistic desk, all polished walnut and chrome, and two chairs in front of it that looked like reclinable astronauts’ seats. I learned soon enough that they were reclinable, and Sam liked to recline in them with female companions.
No windows, but the walls were lined with photographs of astronauts hovering in space, with the big blue curving Earth as a backdrop. Behind Sam’s desk, on a wide walnut bookcase, there were dozens of photos of Sam in astronaut uniform, in a space suit, even one with him in scuba gear with his arm around a gorgeous video starlet in the skimpiest bikini I’ve ever seen.
He sat me in one of the cushioned, contoured recliners and went around behind his desk. I realized there was a platform back there, because when Sam sat down he was almost taller than he had been standing up in front of the desk.
“Ms. Perkins … may I call you Ramona?”
“Sure,” I said, in a valley-girl accent.
“That’s a beautiful name.”
“Thank you.”
“Ramona, until now the thrill of flying in space has been reserved to a handful of professional astronauts like myself—”
“Haven’t some politicians and video stars gone into orbit?” I asked, with wide-eyed innocence.
“Yes indeed they certainly have. A few mega-millionaires, too,” Sam answered. “And if they’ve flown in space there’s no good reason why you shouldn’t have the experience, too. You, and anyone else who wants the adventure of a lifetime!”
“How much does it cost?” I asked.
Sam hiked his rust-red eyebrows at me. And launched into a nonstop spiel about the beauties and glories and excitement of space travel. He wasn’t really eloquent; that wasn’t Sam’s style. But he was persistent and energetic. He talked so fast and so long that it seemed as if he didn’t take a breath for half an hour. I remember thinking that he could probably go out for an EVA space walk without oxygen if he put his mind to it.
For the better part of an hour Sam worked up and down the subject.
“And why shouldn’t ordinary people, people just like you, be allowed to share in the excitement of space flight? The once-in-a-lifetime adventure of them all! Why do government agencies and big, powerful corporations refuse to allow ordinary men and women the chance to fly in space?”
I batted my baby blues at him and asked, in a breathless whisper, “Why?”
Sam heaved a big sigh. “I’ll tell you why. They’re all big bureaucracies, run by petty-minded bureaucrats who don’t care about the little guy. Big corporations like Rockledge could be running tourists into orbit right now, but their bean-counting bureaucrats won’t let that happen for fear that some tourist might get a little nauseous in zero gravity and sue the corporation when he comes back to Earth.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of an accident,” I said, still trying to sound naive. “I mean, people have been killed in rocket launches, haven’t they?”
“Not in years,” Sam countered, waggling a hand in the air. “Besides, the launch system we’re gonna use is supersafe. And gentle. We take off like an airplane and land like an airplane. No problems.”
“But what about space sickness?” I asked.
“Likewise, no problem. We’ve developed special equipment that eliminates space sickness just about completely. In fact, you feel just as comfortable as you would in your own living room for just about the entire flight.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said, with a trust-me nod of his head.
“Wouldn’t you be better off operating in the States?” I probed. “I mean, like, I just ran across your office kind of by accident while I was checking on my flight back home.”
Sam scowled at me. “The U.S. government is wrapped up with bureaucrats and—worse—lawyers. You can’t do anything new there anymore. If I tried to start a space tourist company in the States I’d have sixteen zillion bozos from NASA, OSHA, the Department of Transportation, the Commerce Department, the State Department, the National Institutes of Health and St. Francis of Assisi knows who else coming down on my head. I’d be filling out forms and talking to lawyers until I was old and gray!”
“It’s easier to get started in Panama, then.”
“Much easier.”
I sat there, gazing at Sam, pretending to think it all over.
Then I asked again, “How much does it cost?”
Sam looked at his wristwatch and said, “Hey! It’s just about time for our first space cruiser to land! Let’s go out and see it come in!”
I felt a little like the first time I went out to buy a car on my own, without Daddy or any of my big brothers with me. But I let Sam take me by the hand to his own car—a leased fire-engine-red BMW convertible—and drive me out to an immense empty hangar with a newly painted SPACE ADVENTURE TOURS sign painted across its curved roof.
“Used to be a blimp hangar,” Sam said over the rushing wind as we drove up to the hangar. “U.S. Navy used ’em for antisubmarine patrol. It was falling apart from neglect. I got it for a song.”
The DEA had considered asking the Navy to use blimps to patrol the sea-lanes that drug smugglers used, I remembered.
“You’re going into space in a blimp?” I asked as we braked to a gravel-spitting stop.
“No no no,” Sam said, jumping out of the convertible and running over to my side to help me out. “Blimps wouldn’t work. We’re using … well, look! Here it comes now!”
I turned to look where he was pointing and saw a huge, lumbering Boeing 747 coming down slowly, with ponderous grace, at the far end of the long concrete runway. And attached to its back was an old space shuttle orbiter.
“That’s one of the old shuttles!” I cried, surprised.
“Right,” said Sam. “That’s what we ride into space in.”
“Gosh.” I was truly impressed.
The immense piggyback pair taxied right up to us, the 747’s four jet engines howling so loud I clapped my hands over my ears. Then it cut power and loomed over us, with the shuttle orbiter riding high atop it. It was certainly impressive.