“The budget can be stretched,” Bonnie Jo said. “I think Spence is right. His being on the Cape could save us a lot of problems.”
Sam’s head swiveled from her to me and back to her again. He looked puzzled, not suspicious. Finally he shrugged good-naturedly and said, “Okay, as long as it won’t bust the bank.”
So I moved to the Cape. During the weeks I was there supervising the assembly and checkout of our equipment I actually did save a couple of minor glitches from growing into real headaches. Larry drove over once a week to check the hardware against his design; then he’d drive back to Melinda again that evening. I knew I could justify the expenses legitimately, if to came to that. Most important, though, was that I had put some miles between myself and Bonnie Jo. And she must have realized how attracted I was to her, because she convinced Sam I should get away.
A couple of my old agency buddies snuck me some time on the OMV simulator, so I spent my evenings and spare weekends brushing up on my flying. Our official program didn’t call for any use of orbital maneuvering vehicles. What we had proposed was to set up our magnetic bumper on the forward end of space station Freedom and see how well it deflected junk out of the station’s orbital path. Called for some EVA work, but we wouldn’t need to fly OMVs.
But Sam had warned me to be prepared for flying an OMV, back when we first started writing the proposal.
“Whattaya think we oughtta do,” he had asked me, “if we scoop up something valuable?”
“Valuable?” I had asked.
“Like that glove Ed White lost. Or the famous Hasselblad camera from back in the Gemini days.”
I stared at him. “Sam, those things reentered and burned up years ago.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He flapped an annoyed hand in the air. “But suppose—just suppose, now—that we scoop up something like that.”
We had been sitting in our favorite booth in our favorite bar. Sam liked Corona in those days; slices of lime were littered across his side of the table, with little plastic spears stuck in their sides. They looked like tiny green harpooned whales. Me, I liked beer with more flavor to it: Bass Ale was my favorite.
Anyway, I thought his question was silly.
“In the first place,” I said, “the magnetic field won’t scoop up objects; it’ll deflect them away from the path of the station. Most of them will be bounced into orbits that’ll spiral into the atmosphere. They’ll reenter and burn up.”
“But suppose we got to something really valuable,” Sam insisted. “Like a spacer section from the Brazilian booster. Or a piece of that European upper stage that blew up. Analysts would pay good money to get their hands on junk like that.”
“Analysts?”
“In Washington,” Sam said. “Or Paris, for that matter. Hell, even our buddy D’Argent would like to be able to present his Rockledge lab boys with chunks of the competition’s hardware.”
I had never thought of that.
“Then there’s the museums,” Sam went on, kind of dreamy, the way he always gets when he’s thinking big. “How much would the Smithsonian pay for the Eagle?”
“The Apollo 11 lunar module?”
“Its lower section is still up there, sitting on the Sea of Tranquility.”
“But that’s the Moon, Sam. A quarter-million miles away from where we’ll be!”
He gave me his sly grin. “Brush up on your flying, Mutt. There are interesting times ahead. Ve-r-r-y interesting.”
I could see taking an OMV from the space station and flitting out to retrieve some hunk of debris that looked important or maybe valuable. So I spent as many of my hours at the Cape as possible in the OMV simulator. It helped to keep me busy; helped me to not think about Bonnie Jo.
At first I thought it was an accident when I bumped into Pierre D’Argent in the Shuttle Lounge. It was mid-afternoon, too soon for the after-work crowd. The lounge was cool and so dark that you could break your neck tripping over cocktail tables before your eyes adjusted from the summer glare outside.
I actually did bump into D’Argent. He was sitting with his back to the aisle between tables, wearing an expensive dark suit that blended into the shadows so well I just didn’t see him.
I started to apologize, then my eyes finally adjusted to the dimness and I saw who he was.
“Mr. Johansen!” He professed surprise and asked me to join him.
So I sat at his little table. With my back to the wall. Just the two of us, although there were a few regulars up at the bar watching a baseball game from Japan.
I ordered a Bass. D’Argent already had a tall frosted glass of something in front of him, decorated with enough fruit slices to start a plantation. And a little paper umbrella.
“Your friend Gunn sent our legal department into quite a spin,” he said, smiling with his teeth.
“Sam’s a very emotional guy,” I said as the waitress brought my ale. She was a cute little thing, in a low-cut black outfit with a teeny-tiny skirt.
“Yes, he is indeed.” D’Argent let out a sigh. “I’m afraid Mr. Gunn has no clear idea of where his own best interests lie.”
I took a sip of ale instead of trying to answer.
“Now you, Mr. Johansen,” he went on, “you look like someone who understands where your best interests lie.”
All I could think of to say was, “Really?”
“Really.” D’Argent leaned back in his chair, looking like a cool million on the hoof: elegant from his slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair to the tips of his Gucci suede loafers.
“I must confess that I thought your technical proposal was little short of daring. Much better than the job my own technical people did. They were far too conservative. Far too.”
Was he pumping me for information? I mumbled something noncommittal and let him go on talking.
“In fact,” he said, smiling at me over his fruit salad, “I think your technical approach is brilliant. Breathtaking.”
The smile was very slick. He was insurance-salesman handsome. Trim gray mustache neatly clipped; expensive silk suit, dark gray. I couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, the lighting in the lounge was too dim, but I expect they were gray too.
I shrugged off his compliment. But he persisted. “A magnetic deflector system actually mounted on the space station. Very daring. Very original.”
“It was Sam’s idea,” I said, trying to needle him.
It didn’t faze him a bit. “It was actually the idea of Professor Luke Steckler, of Texas A&M. Our people saw his paper in the technical literature, but they didn’t have the guts to use the idea. You did.”
“Sam did.”
He hiked his eyebrows a bit. They were gray, too. “You’re much too modest, Spence. You don’t mind if I call you Spence, do you?”
I did mind. I suddenly felt like I was in the grip of a very slick used-car salesman. But I shook my head and hid behind my mug of ale.
D’Argent said, “Spence, I know that my technical people at Rockledge would love to have you join their team. They need some daring, someone willing to take chances.”
I guess my eyebrows went up, too.
Leaning forward over the tiny table, D’Argent added in a whisper, “And we’ll pay you twice what Gunn is paying.”
I blinked. Twice.
The lounge was slowly filling up with “happy hour” customers: mostly engineers from the base and sales people trying to sell them stuff. They all talked low, almost in whispers. At least, until they got a couple of drinks into them. Then the noise volume went up and some of the wilder ones even would laugh now and then. But while I was sitting there trying to digest D’Argent’s offer without spitting beer in his face, I could still hear the soft-rock music coming through the ceiling speakers, something old and sad by the Carpenters.