Orbital Decay (15 page)

Dobbs grinned wryly and ran his hands through his uncombed mop of curly black hair. “Yes, that would be nice. You could also add, ‘And, Clayton, we’ll make sure that it never happens again.’”

“Your ego is amazing.”

“You know what I think is amazing?” Dobbs turned his head to gaze with wide, angry eyes at Skycorp’s vice-president. “That you hired me to be your resident boy-genius with one attitude and are now treating me with this attitude. I remembered you telling me that you wanted a trouble-shooter, how space was still a big unknown environment and what Skycorp needed was someone who knew the problems intimately and wouldn’t be afraid to buck the system when it was going wrong. ‘Don’t be afraid to raise hell, Clayton.’ You said that. Well, that’s what I did, and everyone told me to shut up, and now two men are dead and you’re carrying on like this is business as usual. Boy, that sucks.”

Crespin closed his eyes and leaned against a wall. Lord help him, he was beginning to regret hiring Clayton Dobbs. The kid—Dobbs was only twenty-seven—had made a name for himself at MIT as one of the foremost experts in the nitty-gritty details of space engineering. Crespin had first met him when Dobbs joined NASA’s civilian Space Advisory Board: an unkempt young man wearing jeans, an unironed shirt, and a clip-on tie, who slouched in a chair in the back of the room and systematically pounced on and deflated the wild-eyed extrapolations made by NASA’s section chiefs. Dobbs was a hardheaded pragmatist in a field often dominated by hazy-minded dreamers. It was an indication of Dobbs’ attitude toward space that he claimed to loathe science fiction, an oddity when one considered that the average Skycorp employee had at least one novel by Clarke or Niven or Brin on his or her bookshelf.

Crespin had recruited Dobbs, offering him salary and responsibilities far and above anything he could have earned in academia. Unlike many child prodigies (and, indeed, Clayton Dobbs had displayed his genius at an early age, first entering MIT as an honors freshman at the age of fourteen), the young man was not shy of the world outside the ivory tower. Dobbs had taken the job because, he claimed, he wanted to make his ideas work, and he dreaded having to teach classes to underclassmen.

But it was at times like these that Crespin felt as if he should have left the rebellious young engineer in Massachusetts, where he belonged.

“Okay, Clayton, okay.
Mea maxima culpa.
We should have listened to you, we shouldn’t have sent up untested equipment, we should have heeded your warnings. I can’t say that it won’t happen again, though, especially concerning men getting killed up there. Three guys have died now on this project, and you know damned well that three more, or three hundred more, may die before those powersats are completed. But what the hell else do you want me to do?”

Dobbs stared down at his desktop, then looked out over the floor of SpaceOps. “Shit, I dunno. I dunno what any of us can do. I just dread having to lie to the union boards and the NASA inquiry boards over the next couple of days.”

“You mean you won’t tell them what you know about this?”

“No, I mean I won’t blow the whistle on Skycorp. I guess I’ve become too much of a company man to let something stand in the way of the powersats getting completed.” He shot a glance at the older man. “Relieved?”

“Yes, though I didn’t think you’d blow the whistle, anyway.”

“Think of it as a testimony to my own cynicism and character corruption. So what did you want to talk to me about, Kenneth?”

He’s sharp, Crespin thought. He knows I don’t make social calls at times like this. “Big Ear,” he replied.

“What? Oh, that.” Dobbs settled back down in his chair and propped his feet up on the desk. “What about it?”

“Have you been keeping up with it?”

Dobbs shrugged. “They had another test today. The NSA boys on Olympus managed to track down and identify a couple of phone calls which contained key phrases. The Fort Meade computers were able to trace the calls to their correct locations. So far, it seems like the system works, which should please the Senate Select Intelligence Committee no end.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“Well, besides thinking that they should rename it the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Spy Satellite Network, I have the typical soulless scientist’s reaction of ‘okey-doke with me.’”

“Funny to hear that from one of the men who designed the system, to compare it to J. Edgar Hoover. Why, I think it was even you who dubbed the thing Big Ear.”

“What can I say? The idea of total social breakdown in this country scares me. Global terrorism scares me even more. I think it’s time we started trying to take preventive measures, and if it means compromising the First and Fifth Amendments, hey, Tom Jefferson and James Madison didn’t live in a time when Presidents got shot by rifles with laser sights and high school kids were able to build nuclear devices in their basements.”

Crespin folded his arms over his chest and gazed thoughtfully at Dobbs. “You have an interesting set of morals, young man.”

“Fuck morality,” he replied, staring up at the ceiling, “I want to survive in this century.”

Fuck morality
, he said, Crespin thought. Is this the result of our new age, of our enlightened approach to high technology? Would Dobbs say something like that if he wasn’t a pampered, loudmouthed intellectual, or is my son the jock going to come home from Texas A&M next weekend saying the same things? “Sometimes I think you say things simply for shock value,” he said aloud.

Dobbs laughed. “Yeah, okay, maybe so. So what’s the point? Why are you asking me these things?”

“Well, you know of course that they’re completing the Ear’s command and control module.” Dobbs nodded. “It will probably be launched within schedule, sometime before the end of the summer. Because of this accident, though, we can probably expect closer scrutiny by the press, as well as the labor unions, over what Skycorp’s doing, including what we’re sending up at the Cape.”

“So you’re now reluctant to launch this thing from Cape Canaveral,” Dobbs finished. “So what? Ship it over to Vandenberg and launch it there.”

Crespin shook his head. “We’ve already checked with the Pentagon. The manifests for their shuttle launches are full until early next year, and there’s too many military cargos for remanifesting. The solution we’ve arrived at, tentatively, is to subcontract Arianespace and have the thing sent up on one of their boosters from South America.”

“Ah, so. And since I’ve done some work for the ESA in French Guiana, you’d like for me to go down to Kourou to oversee things.” Dobbs shrugged offhandedly. “Sure. No problem there.”

“Well, there’s more. Some of the Board also thinks that the resident boy-genius who helped design the system should follow the module up, and participate in the shakedown on Freedom. That is, in outer space.”

Dobbs stared at him, unblinking, for a full minute before he answered. “The Board of Directors is out of its fucking mind,” he said at last.

Crespin stared back at the brat for as long as it took him to make up his mind whether to kick over his chair. Too much of a waste, he decided; Dobbs would probably just tell the story around the lunchroom for kicks, and Crespin would only get embarrassment for his trouble. Dobbs knows you’re trying to work your way onto the Board, he reminded himself. Don’t give the ungrateful little bastard anything to screw you with. “What makes you say that?” he asked stiffly, never taking his eyes off Clayton’s.

To his surprise, it was Dobbs’ turn to look uncomfortable. He looked away with a growing pout on his face, his shoulders slumping forward. A characteristic Dobbs pose; Crespin had once overheard someone ask aloud if that was how their
enfant terrible
looked while sitting on the throne. Clayton wiped the smirk off his face when Dobbs looked back at him.

“I know it’s my design and my baby and I’ve got some responsibility for it,” Dobbs began slowly, “but—and this is going to surprise you—I have no desire at all to go up there.”

“I know that,” Crespin said, allowing himself a small smile. “We went over that a year ago, with the construction shack.”

“I guess I didn’t make myself clear then,” Dobbs said, keeping his cool, but just so much. “Lemme make myself clear: Going up for myself scares the hell out of me.”

“There’s little to support a reason why,” the Vice-President of Operations said, running his finger idly along the edge of an aluminum paperweight on Dobbs’ desktop—a refined sample from the Moon, if he recognized the granular feel of its surface. “You fly just about everywhere you go, and Nicki books you on everything from commuter crop-dusters to Concordes. You’ve even done a trip on the Vomit Comet, and no one I’ve talked to told me you disgraced yourself….”

“Hey, where did you… who said you could check my medical record?”

It was Crespin’s turn for condescension. “Clay,” he said solemnly, “I’m a vice-president here. I can look at whoever’s record I want. Remember that. I can talk to whomever I want about you. Remember that. Clay….”

Oh, cut the crap with him. “Clay, your job here is mine. I can get you dusted off so quick”—he snapped his fingers and put his fist down hard on Dobbs’ desk, a foot away from the engineer’s foot—“you’d be back to playing with model rockets with your MIT frat brothers.”

“That was the International Space…”

“Forget it. The point is, Dobbs, without my help you don’t get research support from the Board. You know that, but you don’t remember it. When I’m not around to pull strings with the Board, whom you yourself charge with insanity, you become another talented and efficient wheel-bearing here. You earn your keep as an assistant operations manager, but you got your reputation in R & D. Yet you take so long, Clay, and sometimes, people run out of faith….”

“Okay, can the shit, will you Kenny?” Dobbs’ cool was gone, and Crespin could see the fury in his face. “You can cut the bullshit now. You know it’s true and I know it’s true, so you can quit gloating already.” He paused and shook his head, scowling at Crespin. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, though. After all, you hired me.”

“I hired a smart young man,” Crespin replied. “It’s the spoiled little kid that I enjoy torturing.”

“Okay, okay, I can accept that!” Dobbs shouted, throwing his arms up and staring at Crespin with wild eyes. “What I can’t figure is why you want to scare the hell out of me? Jesus Christ, haven’t I made this
clear
yet? I’m a space engineer! I’m fascinated with designing ships and suits and tools and better latrines, but it’s just an abstract with me, a particularly intriguing set of unique variables!
I’m not a goddamn spaceman
! The thought of taking off in a shuttle of any kind—
myself taking off
—shit, Kenneth, it scares me out of my wits. And experiencing microgravity makes me even more ill!”

“You know there’s stuff for that—scopolamine, biofeedback, the rest. That’s if you get spacesick, and there’s no statistical promise that you’ll get that. If I were you I’d worry about it as little as I could,” Crespin said smoothly.

“You bastard. You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t funny. Yeah, I’m enjoying this.”

“Shit.” Dobbs looked out over the operations center. The first of the night shift was beginning to arrive, taking over their stations in the tiers. “Well, it gets me out of here, I guess.”

“Do you mind that?”

“I won’t miss it. Massachusetts I miss,” he said thoughtfully, “but not this Disneyworld. I’m gonna get you for this, Kenneth.”

“You’re the best man for the job, Dobbs. That’s why they want you up there.”

Dobbs turned his chair around, swinging his feet off his desk, and faced his terminal again, deliberately turning his back on Crespin. “Get lost. Go away. I gotta work.”

“Happy trip,” Crespin said. Dobbs didn’t reply, but only reopened another file on his system, and Crespin eventually turned and walked silently out of his office.

D
O YOU REMEMBER THAT
rhetorical question you used to ask yourself, or your friends, in those rare philosophical moments when you were a kid: If given a choice, would you rather die by heat or by cold? Would you rather freeze or fry? At this point, the end of my life, I’m faced with that question again, and in spades, because it’s become a matter of practicality.

See, according to the heads-up display in my helmet, the life-support batteries are beginning to wear out. I guess they’ll probably go before my oxygen supply, although as I’ve explained before it’s really a three-way drag race between air, power, and the duration of this tape. If I want to keep talking—which, frankly, seems the only way to keep myself sane right now—I should try to accommodate power failure. There’s both light and shadow in this crevasse, and the difference is within a couple of hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Continuing to sit in the shadow-side might save my batteries longer, but my toes are beginning to get cold. However, if I get up and walk to the other side and sit in the sunlight, I’ll soon suffocate and roast when the batteries burn out while trying to keep the suit cool. An added consideration is the lifetime of this tape; the recorder has its own battery, I think, but I’m afraid of the tape melting.

I think I’ll stay in the shade. I’m made in the shade. Memo to the Almighty: You should include a note with the writers you make in the future, reading: “Batteries Not Included.”

Ha, ha, ha.

I think I’m losing my mind.

Where was I? Boredom, right. It didn’t get any better after the July accident at Vulcan. Maybe it gave us all something to talk about for a while, and everyone on Skycan had their own views of how it happened, but unfortunately the upshot of the accident was that talking was all it gave us to do. Skycorp got a roasting from the press on the matter of the hazardous equipment the company was using in space, but that was nothing in comparison to what happened when NASA, the unions, and the House Subcommittee on Space Science and Technology got into the act. Between Congressional oversight hearings, NASA regulatory reviews, and the general pissing and moaning by the Aerospace Workers union, Skycorp took a lot of shit for the deaths of those two men. I heard through the grapevine that Skycorp had only barely managed to stop a
New York Times
reporter from taking a shuttle up to investigate first-hand the safety conditions on Vulcan and Skycan; they did it by claiming that the OTV’s had a full passenger manifest for the next three months, which was baloney. It was just as well, I suppose. If the
Times
reporter had not found any more life-threatening design flaws—and actually, there really weren’t any; it was boring up there, but it was still reasonably safe—he probably could have discovered enough juicy stuff from talking to the beamjacks to write one hell of an exposé, and no telling what he would have made of a conversation with H.G. Wallace, our allegedly sound-of-mind project supervisor. We didn’t need any more bad publicity, thank you.