Powersat (The Grand Tour) (38 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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W
illiamson’s stomach still churned queasily and his head felt as if it were stuffed with snot-soaked tissues. He tried to keep perfectly still, strapped into the couch of the Soyuz spacecraft. Like three corpses wedged into a metal. bucket, he thought. The Russian said it would seem bigger once we got to zero gravity, but it still feels like a bloody coffin in here.
“You okay?” Nikolayev asked.
Before Williamson could think of a reply, Bouchachi groaned, “I believe I’m going to die.”
Nikolayev laughed. “No, you won’t die. You might want to, right now, but in few hours you’ll feel better. By time we make rendezvous you’ll be okay to get up and move around.”
Williamson realized he was hearing them through the headphones in his sealed helmet. The Russian had turned on the intercom system.
“Everything is fine,” Nikolayev assured them, pointing with a gloved hand to the curves on the display screen before them. “We are on track for rendezvous with transfer ship. In two hours, eighteen minutes we go to transfer ship waiting for us, then we ride out to powersat. Then I sit and wait for you while you go outside and fix satellite.”
No, Williamson countered silently. Once we reach the powersat I kill you, you stupid Russian bastard. If he hadn’t felt so sick, Williamson would have smiled.
 
 
We
should have hired a band,” Dan said to April as they stood at the base of the airstrip’s control tower, watching
Scanwell’s private jet making its final approach. Wind’s picking up, he noted, watching the distant trees tossing. We’re going to have to turn on the powersat in the middle of a rainstorm.
April squinted up at the darkening clouds piling up in the sky and said nothing. Dan wondered if she were nervous, worried, or just tired. Probably all three, he decided. Al-Bashir stood at her other side, chatting quietly with the representative that NASA had sent for the occasion.
“A brass band would’ve been a nice touch,” Dan said to no one in particular. He was talking to cover his own nervousness, and he knew it. “We could’ve had them play ‘Hail to the Chief’ when Scanwell gets out of his plane.”
April said softly, “He isn’t president yet.”
Forcing a grin, Dan replied, “Well, he’s still governor of Texas. We could’ve played ‘The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You’ or something like that.”
That brought a smile to her lips. Dan felt better for it.
Eight TV trucks were lined up in the parking area, their cameras tracking Scanwell’s approaching jet. Dan turned the other way and saw the booster standing on the launchpad, with the spaceplane sitting atop it. Ready to go, he thought. Just like a Minuteman. I only hope we don’t need it.
The business jet touched down with a screech of tires and rolled to the apron where Dan and the others were waiting. News reporters surged toward the plane. Dan congratulated himself that none of the TV vans had been accosted by the eco-nut demonstrators; his little detour had worked.
The plane’s hatch swung open and Morgan Scanwell appeared at the top of the stairs, tall and rangy, smiling confidently, waving to the crowd—which was mostly news media people. Vicki Lee was among them, Dan saw, representing
Aviation Week.
He wondered if she planned to stay overnight and, if she did, what he would do about it.
Jane followed Scanwell down the plane’s stairs, looking splendid in a soft green-skirted suit. Regal, Dan thought. That’s the word for her. She should be running for president, he told himself. She’d be much better at it than he would.
 
 
N
acho Chavez looked decidedly unhappy, Eamons thought. Not angry, not frightened, just plain unhappy, miserable, like a little boy who got caught doing something naughty.
The regional director, on the other hand, looked outright furious. She sat behind her desk like an enraged gnome, anger radiating from her frowning, hard-eyed face.
A helluva way to spend a Sunday morning, Eamons had to admit
“You implanted a tracking beacon on her body?” the director growled.
“I did it,” Eamons said. “Agent Chavez didn’t know about it until after it was done.”
“You did the procedure yourself?”
“No, Ma’am. I requisitioned the electronic device from logistics and got a local surgeon to do the implantation last night. It’s really a simple procedure.”
“And you expect this office to pay for it?”
Chavez shifted in his chair and said, “For what it’s worth, I agree with Kelly’s initiative.”
“Initiative? Is that what we’re calling this?”
Hunching his heavy shoulders, Chavez pointed out, “The woman voluntarily accepted the implantation.”
“It’s the only way to keep track of her,” Eamons said with some urgency. “The suspect wants to take her out of the country and we need to keep track of her. For her own safety.”
“Out of the country? You mean they’re going to Mexico?”
Eamons shook her head and answered in a lowered voice, “No, Ma’am. France.”
“France!” the director exploded. “They’re going to France?”
“Marseille, apparently. They’re leaving tonight, according to my information.”
“On a private plane,” Chavez chimed in.
“We don’t have jurisdiction!” the director yelled. “What
in the hell was going through your brain when you dreamed up all this bullshit?”
Eamons stiffened. “Ma’am, we have reason to believe that this man al-Bashir was involved in the sabotage of the Astro Corporation spacecraft and the murders of three Astro employees.”
“And now he’s going to Marseille,” Chavez added.
“And you’ll have this woman going with him. A civilian!” The director glared at them both. “For Christ’s sake, you could both be accused of promoting prostitution, you know that? If you don’t get her killed first.”
Chavez’s face reddened.
“And you still don’t have any real evidence about this so-called suspect of yours, do you?”
“He’s our man,” Eamons replied stubbornly. “I’m sure of it.”
The director snorted disdainfully. “Marseille,” she growled.
“I could phone her and tell her to cancel the trip,” Eamons said.
“We’ll have to get the satellite spooks to track her,” the director grumbled.
Eamons sat up straighter. “Nacho and I could fly to Marseille,” she suggested.
“Like hell you will,” the director said. “You’ve spent enough of my budget as it is.”
“Why is he going to Marseille?” Chavez wondered aloud.
The director glared at him for a moment, then said quietly, “Latest poop from Washington, the spooks have found some unusual electronic activity just outside Marseille. It was in Friday’s summary from Homeland Defense.”
“Electronic activity?”
“They don’t know what it is. They’re trying to home in on it, but it’s intermittent, comes and goes.”
Eamons said slowly, “Dan Randolph believed that his spaceplane crashed because somebody sent spurious electronic commands to it.”
With a disgusted sigh, the director said, “I’ll have to kick this upstairs to Washington.”
As they left the director’s office, Chavez whispered to Eamons, “Are you sure you want to let this woman fly out to Marseille with al-Bashir?”
“She wants to do it,” Eamons said.
“You could be putting her neck in a noose.”
“That’s why I had her implanted with the tracker.”
“Big help that’s going to be.”
D
espite the frigid gusts blasting from the air-conditioning shafts that ran along the ceiling, the control center felt hot and stuffy to Dan, with all the VIPs and news people squeezed inside its cinderblock walls. He stood by the closed double doors, pressed next to April, cold sweat trickling down his ribs.
Scanwell was standing on Dan’s other side, his eyes sweeping the quietly intense room. Jane was beside the governor; aside from a completely impersonal handshake and greeting, she had said nothing to Dan.
Lynn Van Buren was on her feet in the midst of the consoles, headset clamped over her short brown hair. The technicians were bent over their keyboards, their backs to the spectators. The big wall screen displayed an animated drawing of the Earth, with Astro headquarters and the receiving station at White Sands identified in big white block letters, and a square representing the power satellite high above. A dotted red line flickered from Matagorda to the satellite.
“Can we get a picture of the satellite out there in space?” Scanwell asked, leaning slightly toward Dan.
Shaking his head, Dan replied, “We don’t have cameras up there. It’s an extra expense we don’t need.”
“But what about NASA, or the Air Force?”
Dan grimaced. “We’re not a government operation, so they’ve steered clear of us. Maybe the news services will turn one of their satellites around for a picture, but their birds are all focused on the ground. We couldn’t even get imagery from them when our first spaceplane crashed.”
Scanwell shook his head. “Seems to me there ought to be some video coverage of your satellite.”
Pointing to the news people, Dan said, “Tell them.” Silently, he added, Maybe once you’re in the White House you can change things that much.
In addition to her normal headset, Van Buren had the tiny microphone of a portable amplifier clipped to her blouse, just beneath her inevitable necklace of pearls. She reached for the power pack tucked in the waistband of her skirt and turned it on. A blood-curdling howl of electronic feedback shrieked through the control center.
“Sorry about that,” Van Buren apologized, fiddling with the power pack. “Can everybody hear me?”
A ragged chorus of assent rippled through the crowd. Some of the onlookers raised their hands like schoolchildren.
“Okay. Fine,” said Van Buren. Pointing to the big clock on the wall, she told them, “We’re in the final countdown now. In two minutes the satellite will start beaming power to the rectenna farm … I mean, the receiving antennas, out at White Sands.”
It was like New Year’s Eve, Dan thought. Every eye turned to the big clock and its steadily clicking second hand. Van Buren turned off the amplifier. Dan knew she was going through the final checkout with the technicians: solar cells, inverters, magnetrons, output antenna, receiving antennas.
People started counting the seconds aloud, “Thirty … twenty-nine …”
Unbidden, the old joke about the world’s first totally automated airliner came to Dan’s mind: The plane’s computerized pilot speaks to the passengers through its voice synthesizer circuitry and assures them that the flight would be under perfect control at all times. The automated little speech concludes, “Nothing can go wrong … go wrong … go wrong …”
“Fifteen … fourteen … thirteen …”
My whole life’s tied up in this, Dan told himself. If it doesn’t work I’m finished, down in flames.
“Eight … seven …”
He leaned forward slightly to look past Scanwell at Jane. Her eyes were on the clock, too. And her hands were clenched into tight little fists. This means a lot to her, too, Dan realized. But is it because of me or Scanwell?
“Transmitting power!” Van Buren called out.
The animation on the wall screen showed a solid green line running from the satellite to the rectennas at White Sands. Somebody gave a cowboy whoop. Others cheered. April jumped up and down and threw her arms around Dan’s neck. Shocked, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Ten gigawatts on the line!” Van Buren shouted. “All systems up and running!”
Even the technicians joined the celebration, whipping off their headsets and grabbing each other in bear hugs. Dan disentangled himself from April, who looked suddenly embarrassed.
“We did it, kid!” he shouted at her over the blare of the crowd’s cheering. “We did it!”
Scanwell grabbed him by the shoulder and stuck out a big hand. Dan shook it while two dozen cameras flashed away. Then Jane shook his hand too, smiling her politician’s smile while her eyes focused on April.
Every reporter in the room started shouting questions at Dan and Scanwell. Out of the corner of his eye Dan saw that the wall screen now displayed a graph of the power being received by the rectennas. The curve climbed steeply to ten gigawatts and stayed there.
Grinning, Dan thought that he could start making some money now by selling that power to the Western electric utilities. California won’t have any blackouts this summer, he told himself happily.
T
he Egyptian was too nervous to stay in the makeshift control center, so he went outside into the garden and sat in the shade of an ancient, gnarled olive tree. It was too hot and intense down in the basement with that quartet of bearded young electronics specialists, with their multiple earrings and other piercings defacing their lips and brows. He could barely understand what they were saying, their English was so studded with arcane jargon. Besides, they had turned the basement into a pigsty, littering it with emptied fast-food cartons and crumpled papers and plastic bottles; the floor crunched with crumbs when you walked across it.
It is going well, the Egyptian assured himself as he gazed out on the calm Mediterranean. Below this hilltop villa sprawled the city, dirty, noisy and dangerous. But from up here he could watch the placid sea glittering as the sun set at the end of a lovely springtime afternoon.
It is going well, he repeated to himself. The astronauts have reached their transfer ship. The new antenna was precisely where it was supposed to be, and now they are taking it up to the power satellite. If the American TV news can be believed, the power satellite is already beaming power to Earth.
Soon that power will kill thousands. And the Americans will never know that we caused it to be so. They will think their satellite malfunctioned. They will believe that it is dangerous. They will demand that it be destroyed.
Not a bad result for the cost of three martyrs. And one of them doesn’t even know he will become a martyr.
 
 
O
ne should never give news reporters free liquor, thought al-Bashir. He stood in the corner of Hangar A and watched the reporters and camera crews swilling the champagne and harder spirits that Dan Randolph had provided, making asses of themselves as they got gloriously drunk. Dan had wisely made arrangements to have his own security personnel drive the louts to the Astro Motel for the night. No fool, this man Randolph.
Governor Scanwell and Senator Thornton had taken a perfunctory sip of champagne and then flown off to their next campaign stop. The noise level in the metal-walled hangar was becoming intolerable. Al-Bashir finished the plastic cup of cola that he had been holding for nearly an hour, then walked out into the parking lot and got into his Mercedes.
He started up the engine and turned the air-conditioning on high, then pulled out his cell phone and called his office in Houston. They would patch his call to Tunis, where in turn the call would be forwarded to Marseille. The roundabout routing was time-consuming, but al-Bashir wanted to make certain his call would not be traced.
Perhaps I should speak to Garrison, he thought, and inform him of Randolph’s success. With a slight smile, he wondered if the news would give the old man a fatal stroke or heart attack. Not likely. Garrison is made of stronger stuff than that.
His conversation with the Egyptian in Marseille was brief.
“It is a success,” al-Bashir said, without even identifying himself.
“It goes well here,” the Egyptian replied.
“Good. I will arrive there near dawn tomorrow, I should think.”
“We will expect you then.”
Al-Bashir clicked the phone off. Now to find April, he thought. It’s time to take her away with me.
 
 
O
nce Jane left the celebration, Dan decided he’d had enough of it, too. He saw April in the crowd, talking to al-Bashir. Then the Arab went out and didn’t come back, leaving April
to chat with a couple of the news people. Some chat, Dan thought. You have to scream at the top of your lungs just to hear yourself think. The noise level was starting to hurt his ears. Vicki Lee was somewhere in the crowd; he’d lost sight of her.
So he made his way through the drinkers to Niles Muhamed and asked his help in loading a carton of champagne bottles and a cooler of ice into one of the company minivans.
“You goin’ to have your own party?” Muhamed asked, his face glowering with suspicion.
“Sort of,” said Dan with a lopsided grin.
With Muhamed in the passenger seat beside him, Dan drove out to the main gate. The state police contingent had gone, but the Astro guards were still there, and a handful of demonstrators were sitting disconsolately on the hoods of their cars, their placards down on the ground.
Dan told the guards to open the gate, then drove the minivan a few yards up the road and pulled over to the side.
Hopping out of the car, he went to its rear hatch and popped it open.
“I thought you guys might like some champagne,” he said brightly.
A short, compactly built man with a sandy ponytail walked up to Dan, suspicion etched on his face.
“Champagne? For us?”
“Why not?” Dan said, grinning. “Just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean we have to be sore at each other.”
Rick Chatham stared at Dan. “You’re Dan Randolph, aren’t you?”
“Right,” said Dan, handing Chatham a bottle of champagne.
“I don’t get it.”
With a quick shrug, Dan said, “Look, you made your demonstration. You did your thing. And we did ours. The satellite’s beaming power and the world hasn’t come to an end. Let’s have a drink.”
Several more of the demonstrators came up behind Chatham, eying the champagne.
“This isn’t over, you knows,” Chatham said. “We haven’t given up.”
“Fine,” Dan replied. “In the meantime, have some bubbly. It’s kind of warm, but there’s a cooler of ice here.”
The demonstrators crowded around the rear end of the minivan, grabbing bottles.

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