The Dig Page 3

  "All right, what about Woodside, or Turginson, or even Murasaki?"

  Page was nodding. "Sure, what about them? Any one of them could probably handle it, and they'd probably do a good job, and they'd probably bring it off. It's all a matter of trying to put together the best package. Of stacking the odds in favor of success. Everybody, everything, says that putting you in charge gives us the best odds."

  "Want to know what you can do with the odds?" Low could feel the temperature dropping as the fog began to block out the sun. "Who else would be on the mission?"

  Page felt a great weight lift from his shoulders. Low hadn't agreed to come aboard, hadn't consented to participate, had not in actual fact agreed to anything, but he'd stepped over an invisible line. The representative did not pause to savor his accomplishment. He was too grateful to celebrate. That could come later.

  "Before I tell you, there's something I've always wanted to know. Something that's been bugging me for years." Low turned to him. "Why did your parents name you after the city in which you were born, and why don't you live there instead of here? They're both seaports, both on a coast."

  It was Low's turn to chuckle softly. "I grew up there. That was enough. You can grow out of a place, you know. I'm just grateful I wasn't born in Indianapolis, say, or Winnemunca."

  Page grinned back at him. "The copilot will be Ken Borden."

  Low's response was approving. "Should've guessed."

  "I thought you would anyway." Page knew that Borden had flown with Low before and had served as copilot to other captains during the commander's third and fourth missions. Borden was always up, always cheerful, efficient and smart, one of the brightest stars in the program. All he was missing was that little extra something that led Mission Control to designate one pilot as commander and another as backup. No one ever told him that, of course.

  Not that he was incapable. Quite the contrary. It was simply that he never seemed to be anyone's first choice. If he was bitter, or disappointed, or ever guessed the truth, he never let on, never complained. Borden was the ultimate team player.

  "Ken's a good man," affirmed Low. "We've always been comfortable with each other." Coming from someone like Low, the word comfortable carried with it a raft of favorable connotations in the private lexicon of shuttle pilots. "What about the explosives? Are the Russians sending along one of their own people?"

  Page shook his head. "Washington and Moscow both want someone who's had some Russian training but is more experienced in shuttle payload procedure. There's not enough time to train an explosives specialist. I'm told the packages are fail-safe and so simple a ten-year-old could set them."

  "Oh, now, that's reassuring," Low responded sarcastically.

  "Relax. You know Cora Miles?"

  "Cora?" Low brightened perceptibly. "She's still in the program?"

  "Sure is. What made you think otherwise?"

  "I remember Cora as being a little too aggressive to stay with any one enterprise for any length of time. Even the space program. Last I heard she was thinking of running for a House seat."

  "She is. This'll probably be her last mission."

  "Cora always was good at timing." He laughed under his breath. "That's Cora: unrestrained ambition held in check only by the inability to do a hasty or bad job."

  "You disapprove? Because if you want somebody else, Boz, it's your call. All you have to do is—"

  "No, no. She'll be fine. You could blindfold her, plug her ears, turn her upside down and spin her around a hundred times and she'd still be able to insert a computer chip into a satellite the size of a city bus utilizing only the shuttle's main manipulator arm. Talk your ear off about her cereal-box endorsement while she was doing it." He smiled at old memories. "Cora'll do just fine.

  "I can see her campaign literature now. 'Vote for Cora Miles, the Woman Who Helped Save the Earth!' That ought to snare her a few votes. Who else? Surely not just the three of us?"

  Page shifted his backside on the unyielding rocks. "No one wants this mission to be crowded. There's a lot of concern about people bumping into one another or putting forth conflicting suggestions at an awkward moment. You know: the Too Many Cooks school of space travel. Once up, there'll be no time for arguing. You and Borden and Miles could do it. Plant the explosives, step back, check the results and get out. A two-day mission."

  "That's something, anyway," Low offered approvingly.

  "However," the rep added quickly, "there will be two ancillary specialists aboard. They won't get in your way, but their presence has been approved. After all, this is the first close-up look humankind's ever had of an asteroid. The international scientific community will hang us all in effigy if they're not allowed to send at least one of their own along."

  "Can't they wait until after the orbit's been stabilized?"

  Page shrugged. "The Russians are already talking about pulling a Mir space station down on its surface. Hut everybody wants something out of this first visit besides just a big bang." His expression sought understanding. "I'm assured he won't get in your way. I can say that now, can't I? We can count you in?"

  Low considered fog and gulls, wondering when he'd see them again. "I suppose." His reply was committed and unenthusiastic. For his visitor's benefit he managed a smile. The same laconic, open smile that had charmed journalists and politicians alike.

  "But only because the damn thing might land on my house, and I like it just the way it is."

  "Sure, right." Page was almost pathetically grateful.

  Low sighed. "When do they want me in Florida?"

  His friend was apologetic. "How long will it take you to pack?"

  "That's what I thought," Low replied sourly. "Not that I have a lot to put in order. I mean, it's not like there's family or anything."

  "I know." Page's voice was perfectly neutral, devoid of any false sympathy. Low appreciated it. "That's another reason they wanted you for this one."

  "Yeah. Wrong place for a family man. This way, anything goes wrong, no wife and kids have to suffer along with the old man. The fewer there are to take the blame, the better. That's agency policy: always looking ahead."

  Page observed simply, "The car's waiting. You won't have to take the bus back."

  Low nodded curtly as he rose. There was no point in trying to explain to someone like Page that he liked to ride the bus, or why.

  CHAPTER 3

  It felt strange to be back at Canaveral. Moist and steamy instead of moist and cool, the air hung heavy on him like a soggy bathrobe. It seemed to pool up in his lungs, making breathing an effort instead of a pleasure. The terrain was flat rather than hilly, the vegetation gnarled instead of straight and orderly. The gulls were a familiar presence, the alligators definitely not. Any vibration underfoot was caused by the movement of massive machines instead of the ground itself.

  I've left my heaaart, in San Francisco, he sang silently to himself. Also wallet, fish, friends, and lifestyle. He hadn't brought along so much as a driver's license. Wasn't required, to drive a space shuttle.

  Those who didn't know him, visitors and workers new to the program, misinterpreted his silence as stress. It was left to others to explain that Boston Low was immune to stress in the same way some people were immune to measles or whooping cough. If there existed such a thing as an antistress gene, it was intimately interwoven in the commander's DNA. Informed that a nuclear bomb was about to go off in his immediate vicinity, Low's response would most likely be a diffident, "Oh well."

  He found the physical plant pretty much unchanged from the time when the spaceport had served as both home and office. He took note of new paint, matured landscaping, and the sizable new assembly building for the Minerva Deepspace probe. A sweeping, glassed-in observation deck to appease visitors and tourists completed the most recent renovations.

  Minerva was twenty years from launch, he knew, and he wondered if he'd live long enough to see it lift off. Much depended on the development of the Russian Proton III launch vehi
cle, along with the size of NASA's budget. Easier to deal with the failings of science than the whims of Congress, he mused. At the same time he wondered why he cared.

  Off in the distance were the two shuttle platforms. The ship itself would still be in the assembly building, being prepped and readied by an army of technicians. Though their components were designed to be interchangeable, each craft had its own individual superstitions, a fact that the men and women who flew them knew. As did the pilots. Low's was that he never mentioned the name of whatever shuttle he was flying until it had safely achieved booster separation.

  A small superstition, quite unjustifiable in a scientifically enlightened age. Especially for a pilot like Low. On the other hand he'd survived five shuttle missions; two as commander, one a near disaster, and saw no reason to change his personal modus operandi.

  Staff and visiting space buffs alike recognized him; the former staring a moment before looking away, the latter voluble to the point of rudeness. He was the hero of the Enterprise, and won't you please sign this for my little boy/girl/niece/nephew/Aunt Clotilde, Commander Low? His casual attire was no disguise. Frequently he paused and signed, knowing even as he did so that his signature was destined for shoeboxes and dusty drawers. His reluctance always gave way to inherent courtesy.

  He'd tried and failed to get out of attending the reception. Need your presence, old chap, Page and the others had insisted. You're a reassuring influence. Good for the program. Won't you pretty-please come? Didn't anyone understand that he was better at navigating clouds than canapes, better at explaining equipment failure than at making small talk?

  Small talk, small people. Clenching his jaws, he stepped into the meeting room.

  It was door-to-derriere with mission specialists, spaceport personnel, hangers-on, would-be hangers-on, the privileged and friends of the privileged, a few captains (or at least lieutenants) of industry, and those ubiquitous high-profile journalists who were nominal friends of the space program but who would desert its cause in an instant in favor of a high-profile murder case, especially if a celebrity or two were involved. There were also several famous science-fiction writers trying hard to pick up women young enough to be their daughters, as well as more U.S. senators than one was likely to encounter outside a major committee meeting.

  Feeling as out of place as a fern on the slopes of Erebus, Low made a beeline for the open bar. The crowd worked to his advantage: No one called out to him. With eyes only for busy bottles and the tip jar, the bartenders ignored him.

  Thus safely ensconced in a relative haven, he shook a few hands and bestowed a few smiles. He'd been through worse, especially after the Enterprise flight. A few faces he was half glad to see: engineers, programmers, others he had worked with. The delight in their eyes when they recognized him was an embarrassment. Low wore his celebrity like a pair of two-sizes-too-small sneakers.

  Each face brought back memories, not all pleasant. Memories of hard work and long days, of sacrifice mental as well as physical. Of the kind of personal, inner satisfaction a man gets from doing a job better than anyone else can. Of friendships made and lost, of laughter and violent disagreement.

  Experiments, satellite repairs, spacewalks. All easy in weightlessness, weren't they? What the public didn't, couldn't, know was that the less weight a man's body has to carry, the greater the burden on the mind. In space Low became a hundred-and-eighty-pound brain. Headaches were more than inconvenient; they could prove fatal.

  Better to let the mass of muscles and blood vessels and nerves and water do most of the work, he knew. That's what he'd been doing for some time now, letting the rest of the corpus lug around a tired brain. The chimps had it right all along.

  The similarity of some of those populating the meeting room to man's nearest genetic relative was striking. He amused himself by inventing more direct comparisons. At least chimpanzees didn't lie.

  Then why was he there? He knew the answer, as did Page and the rest. Boston Low might no longer be an active participant in the space program, but that didn't mean he wanted to see it fail, didn't mean he wished for mankind to remain forever Earthbound. Low hoped for his brethren to reach the stars.

  He just no longer particularly wanted to go there himself.

  Yet here he was once again, pressing the flesh in advance of the instrumentation, doing his part. While others availed themselves of the open bar, he settled as usual for carbonated liquid sugar. From the middle of the room Borden waved at him. Low nodded in response. Ken wouldn't violate his privacy, Low knew. His copilot thrived on the attention and would gladly gather it about himself, thereby freeing Low of the necessity to share.

  During the previous weeks' simulation they'd meshed easily, each complementing the other, a perfect pairing in the ground-based shuttle cockpit. Other than a few hellos, they'd spoken little, not out of an aversion to talk but because there was no need. Each man understood the other, knew his strengths and weaknesses. Borden knew that Low was no fun and so let him be. Low knew the same and was aware that Borden wouldn't miss him.

  He envied his copilot's easy way with a crowd, with the fawning sycophants who hovered about the space program. Technological groupies they were, and he had no use for them. Borden flaunted the nectar of his renown and drew them off, even as Low kept his petals closed.

  The important thing was that Borden didn't need the adulation. He simply enjoyed it.

  When the crowd briefly parted, he saw Cora Miles flanked by two congressmen from California and the senior senator from her home state of Texas. Talking campaign strategy, no doubt. Probably telling her that saving the world from looming catastrophe was all very well and good, but it wouldn't guarantee election to the House. Not that it wouldn't give her a leg up on her opponents, Low mused.

  There was one man he badly wanted to meet. He was supposed to be in attendance, but so far Low hadn't spotted him. When he finally did, there was no mistaking the individual for anyone else. The striking blue eyes beneath the protruding forehead, the chiseled features, the short blond hair and stocky build, all were instantly recognizable from the photos that graced the back covers of numerous book jackets. As if that weren't enough, the tall glass of dark beer the man held like a conductor's baton was conclusive.

  Recognition was simultaneous and mutual. The man pushed his way through the crowd to join Low. Swapping the beer from right hand to left, he smiled without showing any teeth and extended an open palm.

  "Ludger Brink, Commander Low. It is a true pleasure. Wie gehts?"

  "Not too bad. What do you think of all this?"

  The scientist made a face. "Publicity. Personally, I prefer the times when wealthy aristocrats underwrote pure science. Politicians have no class. But then, it is not their approval that we seek, nicht wahr? Only open checkbooks."

  Low simply smiled and raised his cola. Brink was coming along as the representative of the EEC space authority. NASA could have insisted on another one of its own, but the exigencies of good public relations demanded otherwise.

  Besides, Brink was eminently qualified. Not only was he one of the world's two or three leading experts on meteorites and asteroids, with a shelf full of books and well-respected papers on the subject to his credit, he had spent months, not days, in space, as a researcher aboard the Mir II space station. He'd done four spacewalks and his fluency in Russian would allow him to decipher any cryptic instructions that accompanied the critical explosives packages. His other specialty was extraterrestrial seismology, with particular reference to Ionian volcanism.

  Appropriately then, the small bit of colorful embroidery that decorated (he front of his short-sleeved shirt was not of a crocodile or polo player, but of Mons Olympica.

  Low couldn't vouch personally for the scientist's command of Russian, but his English was virtually flawless, with only the slightest suggestion of Teutonic tartness. According to his dossier, Brink was also conversant (if not fluent) in French, Italian and, of all things, Turkish. Equally important to Lo
w, the man's handshake was firm and easy. He carried himself with the kind of confidence only those who are the very best at what they do, and know it, can manage.

  That suited Low just fine. He had no use on a shuttle mission for anyone who was subject to second-guessing, or who doubted his or her own abilities. Such indulgences required time. Along with air, that was the one commodity a shuttle crew did not have to spare.

  "I wish we had more time to prepare and get to know each other, Commander, but the asteroid will not wait."

  Low replied approvingly. He, too, would have preferred more preflight preparation time. It was encouraging that Brink felt the same.

  "I know. Nice to meet you, finally." He glanced around the crowded room. "Wish we had a day or two to talk privately."

  "Warum? Why? You know what you have to do, I know what I have to do. If a machine is properly engineered, the parts should fit together correctly the first time it is turned on. If not, then it is the fault of the designers, not of the parts."

  "Can't argue with that." Low knew that Brink would carry out his work efficiently and as instructed. He just didn't know if he was the kind of guy you'd want to invite down to the local sports bar to watch the big game.

  Not that it mattered. They were only going to be living together for a few days, during which time they'd both be far too busy to worry about establishing any kind of close camaraderie. One of the benefits, Low knew, of a short mission. He was looking to get it over with, not to initiate any long-term friendships.

  Brink looked as well as sounded capable. Low knew he wouldn't have been picked for this mission if it had been otherwise. But it was still good to finally meet him. As for his personality, that bothered Low not at all. He looked at it in much the same way as he did when he was choosing a doctor. Give him the crass, crabby, impersonal and efficient over the smiling, joking, easygoing and incompetent any day.

  "I'm sure we'll get along fine," he told the German. "As for the mission, I've had to do much more delicate work than this out there. This is pretty much a go in, do a couple hours' work and get out. After that, it's out of our hands."