And then he had time for me again.
I had extended my stay in Colon, waiting for the flight that Sam promised. Once he had signed up a full load of paying customers, he brought us all out to the hangar for what he called an “orientation.”
So there we were, forty tourists standing on the concrete floor of the hangar with the big piggy-back airplane cum orbiter looming in front of us like a freshly-painted aluminum mountain. Sam stood on a rusty, rickety metal platform scrounged from the maintenance equipment.
“Congratulations,” he said to us, his voice booming through the echo chamber of a hangar. “You are the very first space tourists in the history of the world.”
Sam didn’t need a megaphone. His voice carried through to our last row with no problem at all. He started off by telling us how great our flight was going to be, pumping up our expectations. Then he went on to what he said were the two most important factors.
“Safety and comfort,” he told us. “We’ve worked very hard to make absolutely certain that you are perfectly safe and comfortable throughout your space adventure.”
Sam explained that for safety’s sake we were all going to have to wear a full space suit for the whole four-hour flight. Helmet and all.
“So you can come in your most comfortable clothes,” he said, grinning at us. “Shorts, T-shirts, whatever you feel happiest in. We’ll all put on our space suits right here in the hangar before we board the orbiter.”
He explained, rather delicately, that each suit was equipped with a waste disposal system, a sort of high-tech version of the pilot’s old relief tube, which worked just as well for women as it did for men.
“Since our flight will be no more than four hours long, we won’t need the FCS—fecal containment system—that NASA’s brainiest scientists have developed for astronauts to use.” And Sam held up a pair of large-sized diapers.
Everybody laughed.
“Now I’m sure you’ve heard a great deal about space sickness,” Sam went on, once the laughter died away. “I want to assure you that you won’t be bothered by the effects of zero gravity on this flight. Your space suits include a special anti-sickness system that will protect you from the nausea and giddiness that usually hits first-time astronauts.”
“What kind of a system is it?” asked one of the elderly men. He looked like a retired engineer to me: shirt pocket bristling with ball-point pens.
Sam gave him a sly grin. “Mr. Artumian, I’m afraid I can’t give you any details about that. It’s a new system, and it’s proprietary information. Space Adventure Tours has developed this equipment, and as soon as the major corporations learn how well it works they’re going to want to buy, lease, or steal it from us.”
Another laugh, a little thinner than before.
“But how do we know it’ll work?” Artumian insisted.
Very seriously, Sam replied, “It’s been thoroughly tested, I assure you.”
“But we’re the first customers you’re trying it on.”
Sam’s grin returned. “You’re the first customers we’ve had!”
Before Artumian could turn this briefing into a dialogue, I spoke up. “Could you tell us what we’ll feel when we’re in zero gravity? Give us an idea of what to expect?”
Sam beamed at me. “Certainly, Ms. Perkins. When we first reach orbit and attain zero g, you’ll feel a moment or two of free-fall. You know, that stomach-dropping sensation you get when an elevator starts going down. But it’ll only last a couple of seconds, max. Then our proprietary anti-disequilibrium system kicks in and you’ll feel perfectly normal.”
Artumian muttered “Ah-hah!” when Sam used the term anti-disequilibrium system, as if that meant something to his engineer’s brain.
“Throughout the flight,” Sam went on, “you may feel a moment now and then of free-fall, kind of like floating. But our equipment will quickly get your body’s sensory systems back to normal.”
“Sensory systems,” Artumian muttered knowingly.
Sam and two people in flight attendants’ uniforms showed us through the orbiter’s passenger cabin. The attendants were both really attractive: a curvaceous little blonde with a megawatt smile and a handsome brute of a Latino guy with real bed-roomy eyes.
We had to climb a pretty shaky metal ladder to get up there because the orbiter was still perched on top of the 747. The plane and the orbiter were gleaming with a fresh coat of white paint and big blue SPACE ADVENTURE TOURS running along their sides. But the ladder was flaking with rust.
It made me wonder just what kind of shoestring Sam was operating on: this big airplane with a NASA surplus space shuttle orbiter perched atop it, and we all had to clamber up this rusty, clattery ladder. Some of Sam’s customers were pretty slow and feeble; old, you know. I heard plenty of wheezing going up that ladder.
The orbiter’s cabin, though, was really very nice. Like a first-class section aboard an airliner, except that the seats were even bigger and more plush. Two seats on either side of the one central aisle. I saw windows at each row, but they were covered over.
“The windows are protected by individual opaque heat shields,” Sam explained. “They’ll slide back once we’re in orbit so you can see the glories and beauties of Earth and space.”
There were no toilets in the cabin, and no galley. The passengers would remain strapped into their seats at all times, Sam told us. “That’s for your own safety and comfort,” he assured us.
“You mean we won’t get to float around in zero gravity like they do in the videos?” asked one of the elderly women.
“ ’Fraid not,” Sam answered cheerfully. “Frankly, if you tried that, you’d most likely get so sick you’d want to upchuck. Even our very sophisticated anti-disequilibrium equipment has its limitations.”
I wasn’t close enough to hear him, but I saw Artumian’s lips mouth the word, “Limitations.”
That evening all forty of us, plus Sam, had a festive dinner together on the rooftop of the local Hyatt Hotel. It was a splendid night, clear and filled with stars. A crescent Moon rose and glittered on the Caribbean for us.
Sam flitted from table to table all through the dinner; I doubt that he got to swallow more than a few bites of food. But he ended the evening at my table and drove me to my hotel himself, while all the other customers rode to their hotels in a rattletrap gear-grinding, soot-puffing big yellow school bus that Sam had rented.
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Sam said happily as we drove through the dark streets. “Space Adventure’s first flight.”
My romantic interest in Sam took a back seat to my professional curiosity.
“Sam,” I asked over the rush of the night wind, “how can you make a profit if you’re only charging ten thousand per passenger? This flight must cost a lot more than four hundred thousand dollars.”
“Profit isn’t everything, my blueeyed space beauty,” he said, keeping his eyes on his driving.
“But if it costs more to fly than you make from ticket sales you’ll go out of business pretty quickly, won’t you?”
He shot a glance at me. “My pricing schedule is pretty flexible. You got the bargain rate. Others are paying more; a lot more.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. That’s another reason I’m operating here in Panama. Let the fat cats open their wallets wider than ordinary folks. If I tried that in the States I’d have a ton of lawyers hitting me with discrimination suits.”
I thought about that as we pulled up in front of my hotel.
“Then how much will you make from this flight?” I asked, noticing that Sam kept the motor running.
“Gross? About a million-two.”