The Sam Gunn Omnibus (15 page)

Most smuggling operators don’t put their own names on doors.

The young woman glanced up from her display screen and saw me standing at
the counter. Immediately she came out from behind her desk, smiling brightly,
and asked in local-accented English, “Can I help you?”

I put on my best Dorothy-from-Kansas look and said, “What kind of tours do
you offer?”

“An adventure in space,” she said, still smiling.

“In space?”

“Yes. Like the astronauts.”

“For tourists?”

“Si—Yes. Our company is the very first in the world to offer a space
flight adventure.”

“In space?” I repeated.

She nodded and said, “Perhaps Mr. Gunn himself should explain it to you.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to bother him.”

“No bother,” she said sweetly. “He enjoys speaking to the customers.”

She must have pressed a buzzer, because the
s.
gunn
door popped open and
out walked Sam, smiling like a used-car salesman.

The first thing about him to strike me was how short he was. I mean, I’m
barely five-five in my flats and Sam was a good two inches shorter than
I
. He seemed solidly built, though, beneath
the colorful flowered short-sleeve shirt and sky-blue slacks he was wearing.
Good shoulders, a little thick in the midsection.

His face was, well..
.cute.
I thought I saw
boyish enthusiasm and charm in his eyes. He certainly didn’t look like your
typical drug lord.

“I’m Sam Gunn,” he said to me, sticking his hand out over the counter. “At
your service.”

I got the impression he had to stand on tiptoe to get his arm over the
counter.

“Ramona Perkins,” I said taking his hand in mine. He had a firm, friendly
grip. With my free hand I activated the microchip recorder in my shoulder bag.

“You’re interested in a space adventure?” Sam asked, opening the little
gate at the end of the counter and ushering me through.

“I really don’t know,” I said, as if I were taking the first step on the
Yellow Brick Road. “It all seems so new and different.”

“Come into my office and let me explain it to you.”

Sam’s office was much more posh than the outer room. He had a big modernistic
desk, all polished walnut and chrome, and two chairs in front of it that looked
like reclinable astronauts’ seats. I learned soon enough that they were reclinable,
and Sam liked to recline in them with female companions.

No windows, but the walls were lined with photographs of astronauts
hovering in space, with the big blue curving Earth as a backdrop. Behind Sam’s
desk, on a wide walnut bookcase, there were dozens of photos of Sam in
astronaut uniform, in a space suit, even one with him in scuba gear with his
arm around a gorgeous video starlet in the skimpiest bikini I’ve ever seen.

He sat me in one of the cushioned, contoured recliners and went around
behind his desk. I realized there was a platform back there, because when Sam
sat down he was almost taller than he had been standing up in front of the
desk.

“Ms. Perkins ... may I call you Ramona?”

“Sure,” I said, in a valley-girl accent.

“That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you.”

“Ramona, until now the thrill of flying in space has been reserved to a
handful of professional astronauts like myself—”

“Haven’t some politicians and video stars gone into orbit?” I asked, with
wide-eyed innocence.

“Yes indeed they certainly have. A few mega-millionaires, too,” Sam
answered. “And if
they’ve
flown in space
there’s no good reason why
you
shouldn’t have
the experience, too. You, and anyone else who wants the adventure of a
lifetime!”

“How much does it cost?” I asked.

Sam hiked his rust-red eyebrows at me. And launched into a nonstop spiel
about the beauties and glories and excitement of space travel. He wasn’t really
eloquent; that wasn’t Sam’s style. But he was persistent and energetic. He
talked so fast and so long that it seemed as if he didn’t take a breath for
half an hour. I remember thinking that he could probably go out for an EVA
space walk without oxygen if he put his mind to it.

For the better part of an hour Sam worked up and down the subject.

“And why shouldn’t ordinary people, people just like you, be allowed to
share in the excitement of space flight? The once-in-a-lifetime adventure of
them all! Why do government agencies and big, powerful corporations refuse to
allow ordinary men and women the chance to fly in space?”

I batted my baby blues at him and asked, in a breathless whisper, “Why?”

Sam heaved a big sigh. “I’ll tell you why. They’re all big bureaucracies,
run by petty-minded bureaucrats who don’t care about the little guy. Big
corporations like Rockledge could be running tourists into orbit right now, but
their bean-counting bureaucrats won’t let that happen for fear that some
tourist might get a little nauseous in zero gravity and sue the corporation
when he comes back to Earth.”

“Maybe they’re afraid of an accident,” I said, still trying to sound
naive. “I mean, people have been killed in rocket launches, haven’t they?”

“Not in years,” Sam countered, waggling a hand in the air. “Besides, the
launch system we’re gonna use is supersafe. And gentle. We take off like an
airplane and land like an airplane. No problems.”

“But what about space sickness?” I asked.

“Likewise, no problem. We’ve developed special equipment that eliminates
space sickness just about completely. In fact, you feel just as comfortable as
you would in your own living room for just about the entire flight.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said, with a
trust-me
nod
of his head.

“Wouldn’t you be better off operating in the States?” I probed. “I mean,
like, I just ran across your office kind of by accident while I was checking on
my flight back home.”

Sam scowled at me. “The U.S. government is wrapped up with bureaucrats
and—worse—lawyers. You can’t do
anything
new
there anymore. If I tried to start a space tourist company in the States I’d
have sixteen zillion bozos from NASA, OSHA, the Department of Transportation,
the Commerce Department, the State Department, the National Institutes of
Health and St. Francis of Assisi knows who else coming down on my head. I’d be
filling out forms and talking to lawyers until I was old and gray!”

“It’s easier to get started in Panama, then.”

“Much easier.”

I sat there, gazing at Sam, pretending to think it all over.

Then I asked again, “How much does it cost?”

Sam looked at his wristwatch and said, “Hey! It’s just about time for our
first space cruiser to land! Let’s go out and see it come in!”

I felt a little like the first time I went out to buy a car on my own,
without Daddy or any of my big brothers with me. But I let Sam take me by the
hand to his own car—a leased fire-engine-red BMW convertible— and drive me out
to an immense empty hangar with a newly painted
space adventure
tours
sign painted across its curved roof.

“Used to be a blimp hangar,” Sam said over the rushing wind as we drove up
to the hangar. “U.S. Navy used
‘
em for
antisubmarine patrol. It was falling apart from neglect. I got it for a song.”

The DEA had considered asking the Navy to use blimps to patrol the
sea-lanes that drug smugglers used, I remembered.

“You’re going into space in a blimp?” I asked as we braked to a gravel-spitting
stop.

“No no no,” Sam said, jumping out of the convertible and running over to my
side to help me out. “Blimps wouldn’t work. We’re using ... well, look! Here it
comes now!”

I turned to look where he was pointing and saw a huge, lumbering Boeing
747 coming down slowly, with ponderous grace, at the far end of the long
concrete runway. And attached to its back was an old space shuttle orbiter.

“That’s one of the old shuttles!” I cried, surprised.

“Right,” said Sam. “That’s what we ride into space in.”

“Gosh.” I was truly impressed.

The immense piggyback pair taxied right up to us, the 747’s four jet
engines howling so loud I clapped my hands over my ears. Then it cut power and
loomed
over us, with the shuttle orbiter riding
high atop it. It was certainly impressive.

“NASA sold off its shuttle fleet, so I got a group of investors together
and bought one of ‘em,” Sam said, rather proudly, I noticed. “Bought the
piggyback plane to go with it, too.”

While the ground crew attached a little tractor to the 747’s nose wheel
and towed it slowly into the old blimp hangar, Sam explained that he and his
technical staff had worked out a new launch system: the 747 carried the orbiter
up to more than fifty thousand feet, and then the orbiter disconnected and lit
up its main engines to go off into space.

“The 747 does the job that the old solid rocket boosters used to do when
NASA launched shuttles from Cape Canaveral,” Sam explained to me. “Our system
is cheaper and safer.”

The word
cheaper
reminded me. “How much
does a tour cost?” I asked still again, determined this time to get an answer.

We had walked into the hangar by now. Technicians were setting up ladders
and platforms up and down the length of the plane. The huge shadowy hangar
echoed with the clang of metal equipment and the clatter of their voices,
yelling back and forth in Spanish.

“Want to go aboard?” Sam asked, with a sly grin.

I sure did, but I answered, “Not until you tell me how much a flight
costs.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” he said, without flicking an eyelash.

“Ten thou....” I thought I recalled that the shuttle cost ten thousand
dollars
a pound
when NASA was operating it.
Even the new Clipperships, which were entirely reusable, cost several hundred
dollars per pound.

“You can put it on your credit card,” Sam suggested.

“Ten thousand dollars?” I repeated. “For a flight into orbit?”

He nodded solemnly. “You experience two orbits and then we land back here.
The whole flight will last a little more than four hours.”

“How can you do it so cheap?” I blurted.

Sam spread his arms. “I’m not a big, bloated government agency. I keep a
very low overhead. I don’t have ten zillion lawyers looking over my shoulder.
My insurance costs are much lower here in Panama than they’d be in the States.
And ...” He hesitated.

“And?” I prompted.

With a grin that was almost bashful, Sam told me, “I want to do good for
the people who’ll never be able to afford space flight otherwise. I don’t give
a damn if I make a fortune or not: I just want to help ordinary people like you
to experience the thrill and the wonder of flying in space.”

I almost believed him.

In fact, right then and there I really
wanted
to believe Sam Gunn. Even though I had a pretty good notion that he was laying
it on with a trowel.

I told Sam that even though ten thousand was a bargain for orbital flight
it was an awfully steep price for me to pay. He agreed and invited me to
dinner. I expected him to keep up the pressure on me to buy a ticket, but Sam
actually had other things in mind. One thing, at least.

He was charming. He was funny. He kept me laughing all through the dinner
we had at a little shack on the waterfront that served the best fish in onion
sauce I’ve ever tasted. He told me the story of his life, several times, and each
time was completely different. I couldn’t help but like him. More than like
him.

Sam drove me back to my hotel and rode up the creaking elevator with me to
my floor. I intended to say good-night at the door to my room but somehow it
didn’t work out that way. I never said good-night to him at all. What I said, much
later, was good morning.

Now, Uncle Griff, don’t go getting so red in the face! It was the first
time I’d let anybody get close to me since the divorce. Sam made me feel
attractive, wanted. I needed that. It was like... well, like I’d run away from
the human race. Sam brought me back, made me alive again. He was thoughtful and
gentle and somehow at the same time terrifically energetic. He was great fun.

And besides, by the time we were having breakfast together in the hotel’s
dining room he offered to let me fly on his space cruiser for free.

“Oh no, Sam, I couldn’t do that. I’ll pay my own way,” I said.

He protested faintly, but I had no intention of letting him think I was in
his debt. Going to bed with Sam once was fun. Letting him think I
owed
him was not.

So I phoned Washington and told my boss to expect a ten-grand charge to
come through—which you, Uncle Griff, will be billed for. Then I got into a taxi
and drove out to the offices of Space Adventure Tours and plunked down my
credit card.