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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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M
uhamed made a rumbling sound deep in his throat as he pointed to the display screen. It showed an animated weather map. Peering over Muhamed’s shoulder, Dan saw the huge circular storm with its well-defined eye slightly off from its center. The sound was down to a whisper; Dan could hardly hear the meteorologist’s commentary over the howling of the wind outside and the drumming of the rain.
“Least we ain’t gonna get the worst of it,” Muhamed murmured.
“This is bad enough for me,” Dan said.
Passeau, standing behind Muhamed’s other shoulder, smiled wanly. “If you think this is bad you should have been in New Orleans for Hurricane Barbara. The streets were flooded up and over first-story windows. We had no electrical power for six days. Roofs blown off, power poles snapped like soda straws. My own car was totaled: flooded up to its roof and then a tree fell on it.”
“You’re not making me feel any better,” Dan said.
“We’ll be okay here,” Muhamed said flatly. “Walls are holdin’ up and the doors are faced away from the wind.”
Dan silently thanked the architects for that. Then he thought that perhaps Niles had decided which direction the doors should face, not the architects.
“There’s some water seeping in.” Passeau pointed toward the doors.
Muhamed headed there. Over his shoulder he said, “If you two want to make yourselves helpful, you can start totin’ sandbags.”
Dan had to laugh at the shocked look on Passeau’s face. “Come on, Claude,” he said. “Lift dat bale, tote dat sandbag.”
 
 
T
he storm was dying down, Kelly Eamons saw.
She had spent the long day in April’s apartment, worried about her but glad to be on the mainland and high enough to avoid any flooding from a storm surge. Except for the shrieking wind outside and her gnawing fear of the storm, it had been a boring time, with nothing much to do except watch television. Shortly before noon the electrical power went out, and Eamons lost even the doubtful solace of TV.
She tried reading. April had some surprisingly erudite books in the apartment’s one bookcase: histories of the Civil War and Reconstruction; biographies of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; a few historical novels and several romances. Eamons sat in the doubtful light of the window and tried to lose herself in one of the novels. All she got out of it was a headache from eyestrain.
But it was getting brighter outside and the rain was definitely slackening. Then the lights came on and the TV blared to life. The digital clock on the DVD player blinked annoyingly. Eamons got out of her chair to fix it when her cell phone rang.
“Kelly, it’s April.”
“How’s it going out there?”
April said, “A couple of cracked windows but otherwise we’re okay. The Weather Channel says the storm’s moving inland and breaking up.”
Eamons nodded, then realized that April couldn’t see it. “We lost power here for a few hours but it just came back on.”
“Listen, Kelly,” April said, lowering her voice slightly. “I think I’ve found something.”
“What?”
“It might not be important, but you told me we should look for anybody who’s getting an unusual amount of money, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, as soon as you can get here, I want to tell you about him.”
“Who?”
Lowering her voice still further, April said, “Len Kinsky, the public relations director.”
 
 
R
oberto had nothing to do. Al-Bashir had gone back to Africa or someplace, leaving Roberto with instructions to sit tight in Houston and pump his contacts inside Astro Corporation for information about Randolph’s plans to fly his backup spaceplane.
But the contacts had run dry. They all claimed that Randolph wasn’t telling anyone about his plans. Other than a quick trip to Venezuela several weeks ago, nobody seemed to know anything about what Randolph would do next. Not even his public relations guy had a clue. Or so he claimed.
Then came Hurricane Fernando, and everything was put on hold for a few days while they rode out the storm and cleaned up after it.
Now Roberto sat in his modest apartment and waited for one of his contacts to phone him. He hated to wait. I could be out cruisin’ downtown, he told himself. What good’s the money I’m makin’ if I gotta sit here like a punk in a holdin’ tank and wait for some damned
pendejo
to phone me? I shoulda given him my cell number. So he remained in the apartment, sitting in the reclining chair in front of the TV for hours on end, getting up only to trudge to the refrigerator for another can of beer, or to the bathroom to relieve himself. His anger smoldered, simmering hotter with each passing hour.
If I go out somebody’ll call and I’ll miss it. He won’t talk on the answering machine. So I gotta wait here like a fuckin’ moron.
Roberto was asleep in the recliner when the phone rang. Instantly awake, he grabbed it and growled, “Yeah?”
“You told me to call,” said the contact’s voice.
“So whatchoo got to tell me?”
“Nothing new.”
“Nuthin’? Whattaya mean nuthin’?”
“They got a booster back up on the launchpad and they’re going to put the spaceplane on it.”
“That’s somethin’, ain’t it?”
“It’s what they were going to do before the hurricane.”
“When they gonna launch it?”
The man’s voice hesitated. “This isn’t for a launch. They don’t have the government’s approval for a flight. They’re just checking out the connections, making sure the spaceplane and the booster fit together okay.”
“And then what?”
“They’ll take ’em down, I guess.”
“You get paid to do more’n guess, man.”
“Randolph’s keeping his cards close to his vest. Nobody knows what he’s planning to do next.”
“Somebody’s gotta know.”
“Well, yeah. The chief engineer must know. Van Buren. But she’s not talking to anybody.”
“She ain’t talkin’ to you, is what you mean.”
“She’s not talking to anybody! I’m telling you, nobody knows what’s coming up next. The whole fucking company could collapse. Randolph could declare bankruptcy and we’ll all be out on our asses.”
Roberto was not an engineer, nor a technician, not even a high school graduate. But he had the dogged capacity to pursue a course stubbornly and not be deterred by any excuses.
“Lissen to me,” he said slowly. “If that engineer knows what’s goin’ down, then he’s the one you gotta pump.”
“She.”
“He, she, whatever. You find out from her what Randolph’s gonna do.”
“She won’t talk to me about it. I’ve tried and she shuts up like a clam.”
Roberto thought that he could open up a clam, no problem. But he kept his patience and asked, “You mean there’s nobody else in the whole fuckin’ company knows what Randolph’s gonna do?”
A long hesitation. Then the man said, “Maybe his secretary. She makes all his appointments and stuff.”
“Lean on her.”
“I don’t know about that She—”
“You lean on her, man. Or I’ll come down there and do it for you.”
“Hey, you don’t have to do that.”
“Then you do your job.”
“I’m not getting paid enough for this.”
“You’re gettin’ paid plenty. Now earn it!” Roberto slammed the phone down. Fuckin’ jerkoff.
On Matagorda Island Len Kinsky heard the phone connection click dead. He felt cold and clammy and realized he was sweating. If only I can get April to come to New York with me, he thought, maybe I could get her to tell me what I need to know about Dan’s plans.
Of one thing Kinsky was certain. Mating the spaceplane to a booster was no test. Dan was planning to fly the bird. When, where, and how: those were the questions Kinsky needed to find answers for. He knew Roberto would not wait long, and the last thing he wanted was a visit from that Neanderthal.
D
an craned his neck looking up at the clean, lean line of the gleanting white booster and the graceful silvery swept-wing spaceplane perched atop it, its needle nose pointed into the bright morning sky. The weather had turned friendly, blue sky dotted with fat puffs of white cumulus clouds sailing sedately on the breeze coming in from the Gulf. He could smell the tang of the sea and the sweet odor of the distant pines.
You’d never know a hurricane had blown past here a couple of days ago, Dan thought. The launchpad had been cleaned of the scrub and debris that had littered the area in
the aftermath of the storm. The puddles and outright ponds of rainwater had either been pumped dry or evaporated in the sunshine. To Dan’s happy relief all of Astro’s buildings had survived Fernando with only minor damage. His Jaguar had suffered the most: its ten-year-old fabric top had ripped off in the storm and the car’s interior looked like a swimming pool when he went out to check on it
Could have been a lot worse, he said to himself as he slowly walked around the perimeter of the launch platform, admiring the booster-and-spaceplane combination. The gantry structure had been rolled away from the platform; only the umbilical tower stood beside the booster, with a pair of heavy electrical cables running from it to hatches in the top of the booster and just below the wing root of the spaceplane.
“You look happy, chief,” said Lynn Van Buren, pacing along beside him. Like Dan, she wore a hard hat with her name stenciled onto it just below the stylish Astro Corporation logo.
“Rocket’s on the pad and all systems check, from what you told me,” Dan replied. “Why shouldn’t I be happy?”
“What do we do now?” she asked.
Dan leaned his back against the sturdy steel railing of the platform and gazed up again at the spaceplane, thinking, She’s built to fly. She shouldn’t be sitting here on the ground. She ought to be up in the sky, where she belongs.
“All the checkouts complete?” he asked Van Buren.
“Aye-yup. All the connectors are mated and all systems are functioning. Batteries and fuel cells fully charged.”
Dan looked into the engineer’s hazel eyes. She seemed amused, expectant, as if the two of them were playing a game and she knew what his next move would be.
“Is the plane fueled up?” he asked.
A hint of a smile curved her lips slightly. “Nossir. The mating test is done with the upper stage empty.” He saw in her face that she was thinking, You know that, chief.
Dan played the game, too. He looked around the platform, down to the ground where a trio of technicians were fussing with an auxiliary generator, out to the blockhouse where the
launch crew directed tests and launches, then back to Van Buren’s anticipant expression.
“I want a full-up test,” he said. “A full propellant load in the spaceplane, just as if we were going to launch.”
“But we don’t have any LOX or liquid hydrogen. The facility blew up, remember?”
Lowering his voice, Dan told her, “There’s a truck convoy on its way here with enough LOX and aitch-two to fill the bird’s tanks. They’ll arrive tonight, after most of the workforce has gone home.”
Van Buren looked only slightly surprised. She asked, “So we fuel her up tonight?”
“Yep. With a minimum work crew.”
The engineer nodded. “And then what?”
He grinned at her. “And then you and your top five people take a little trip to Venezuela.”
Her eyes went wide. “Venezuela?”
“Gotcha,” said Dan.
 
 
C
laude Passeau was in the office that Dan had loaned him, in the engineering building that flanked Hangar A.
Dan popped his head past the office’s open doorway and asked cheerily, “Want to go to lunch?”
Passeau was busily tapping at his computer keyboard. Without looking up from the screen, he said, “It’s not quite eleven A.M.”
“I know,” Dan said, stepping fully into the tidy little office.
Dan had given the FAA administrator a corner office with two windows, and Passeau kept it as neat as if it were his permanent residence. The other FAA and NTSB people got claustrophobic cubicles with shoulder-high partitions and barely enough room for a desk and a wastebasket.
Sitting in the hard plastic chair in front of Passeau’s desk, Dan said, “I thought I’d tootle over to Lamar for some local frog’s legs.”
Passeau looked up from the keyboard. “Frog’s legs? Really?”
“The size of drumsticks,” said Dan.
Passeau stifled a laugh when they walked out onto the parking lot and he saw the rusted, dented old Chevrolet twodoor hatchback sitting in Dan’s space.
“It belongs to the guy who’s fixing my ragtop,” Dan explained crossly. “The only loaner he had, he claimed.”
Passeau shook his head. “How the mighty have fallen.”
Dan shrugged apologetically. “Needs a muffler, too.”
As Dan drove the rattling, growling Chevy to the ferry, he said to Passeau, “You know, Claude, you look kind of peaky.”
“Peaky?”
“Tired. Overworked. What with the hurricane and all, you must be pretty stressed out.”
“Are you saying that this would be a good time for me to take a vacation?”
Driving up the bumpy ramp onto the ferry, Dan said, “I think so. The Riviera’s very nice at this time of year.”
Passeau smiled knowingly. “Dan, my friend, don’t you think it would be just a little conspicuous for an underpaid and overworked government official to take a vacation on the Riviera?”
“Maybe,” Dan conceded.
Passeau said nothing as the ferry chugged to life and pushed away from the pier. Dan felt the waves of the bay surging beneath them. Passeau seemed unfazed by the chop.
“Actually,” Passeau said mildly, “I believe it’s time for me to return to my office in New Orleans. This investigation can be finished up from there.”
“No vacation?” Dan asked.
“Not at this time,” Passeau replied smoothly. “Perhaps later, after my final report is finished.”
“I see.”
“If you’re still in business by then.”
Dan glowered at him.
 
 
T
hat evening April and Kelly Eamons planned their strategy.
“This could be nothing at all,” April repeated for the twentieth time as she dressed for her dinner date.
“You said he was flashing a wad of money,” Eamons said, sitting on April’s bed.
“He
talked
about a lot of money,” April replied, pulling the sleeveless, sequined gunmetal top over her dark gray slacks. “He was sort of drunk.”
“
In vino veritas,”
said Eamons.
“But he wasn’t just bragging about money,” April said, thinking back to her hurricane-party conversation with Kinsky. “He kept saying he had to take care of numero uno: feather his own nest, that sort of talk.”
Resting her chin on her fists, Eamons said gloomily, “It’s the only lead we’ve got.”
April fastened a string of faux pearls around her throat, studied them for a moment in the full-length mirror on her clothes closet door. The glittery sleeveless top was highnecked, but she thought it looked kind of sexy, nonetheless. The slim-cut slacks accentuated her legs without looking slutty. Trying to remember how tall Kinsky was, she decided to wear low heels.
Turning to Eamons, she asked, “Do you really think Len might have had something to do with Joe Tenny’s death? And Pete Larsen’s?”
Eamons’s face was puckered into a frown of concentration. “From what you’ve told me about Kinsky, no, frankly I don’t. Probably at worst he’s taking money to keep somebody informed about what’s happening inside Astro.”
“Like a spy?”
“Industrial espionage. Happens all the time. If Tricontinental and this Japanese firm are maneuvering to take over Astro, it makes sense that one of them would want an informant inside the company. Possibly both of them.”
April shook her head and went into the bathroom to put the final touches on her makeup.
“That makes me a counterspy, then?” she called through the open bathroom door.
“You just be damned careful with him,” Eamons said, getting up and walking to the door. “He might be just an informant,
but the people he’s talking to could be damned dangerous.”
“I know,” April said without turning her head from the mirror above the sink.
“Just be your charming self. Listen a lot, talk a little. I’ll follow you at a discreet distance.”
Pressing her lips together to blot her lipstick, April asked, “Do I look okay?”
“You look terrific,” said Eamons, with a sly grin. “I wouldn’t mind taking you to New York myself.”
April felt her cheeks burn.

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