CHAPTER 56

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measured out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam's finger forth...?
-- Ray Bradbury
If Only We Had Taller Been

22 August

Sherry Cooper smiled with a confidence and relief she seldom experienced these days. The team of thirty ground personnel poring over Aurora completed their turnaround on the spacecraft in a little over fifty-four hours. Freespace stood ready to launch its second orbital flight less than a week after its first.

She sat in the blockhouse beside Thom, watching the countdown, which stood at T-minus two minutes. Her husband's Astra Constable .380 stayed behind in her hotel room; she would not need it today, she knew in her bones, what with the riot of reporters milling about the launch site. They covered this flight with a scrutiny unprecedented in the brief, spotty history of private space travel. After the spectacular success of Crockett's and Grant's secret launches, and the low-key downplaying of coverage on Poubelle's launch and Aurora's maiden voyage, every news agency on the face of the globe realized that -- this week -- the history of the world had changed trajectory.

Nonetheless, she made certain that at least three news teams clustered around the range safety officer, recording his every movement.

The moment approached. Onboard the once-again pilotless Aurora, in the payload section where one variant of the Starblazer design called for twenty seats intended for tourists, were instead two aluminum-lithium tanks, holding a combined total of 16,000 pounds of fuel and oxidizer above and beyond what it needed to achieve orbit.

All eyes turned toward the video screen at T-minus thirty seconds.

Sherry's heartbeat accelerated inside her; on the outside, perspiration prickled at her flesh. The first flight's success might have been a fluke. This second flight after rapid recycling of the spacecraft provided the true test of the entire Freespace launch system. The future of her company, of private commercial spaceflight itself, rested on the events of the next ten minutes.

Deep inside Aurora, a computer command sent frigid liquid oxygen flowing trough pipes and valves to mix with liquid hydrogen in the twenty combustion chambers. Pyrotechnics, fed by the flow of oxidizer, ignited the fuel to unleash a powerful explosion of thrust.

"Liftoff!" the launch director said. "Liftoff of Aurora's second flight, this time on a mercy mission to bring desperately needed fuel to Space Station Volnos."

Sherry Cooper nodded at Thom Brodsky, who tapped a few commands into his console. Television and radio audiences around the globe suddenly heard a familiar voice over their sets: the recorded voice of Barry Gibbon transmitted from onboard Aurora.

"The ruling élite -- and believe me, I have access to the highest levels, those who tell presidents and prime ministers what to do -- will not permit access to space to hordes of commoners. The world's political economy is based upon scarcity. Space travel would disrupt that completely."

"Who the hell is that?" someone said.

"Sounds like Barry Gibbon," Gen. Lundy answered, frowning. He turned to Mrs. Cooper. "What is this?"

"My husband recorded it just before he was murdered. Listen."

"... imagine how the military feels about anyone other than they capturing the high ground. Rather than see that happen, they would much prefer to invade an equatorial country on some pretext and disrupt a company's efforts, or blow up a spacecraft in the boost phase, or assassinate financial backers and company founders."

Sherry looked at Lundy, gravely grateful, and said, "Now, General, everyone will pay attention to Range Safety."

***

At NORAD Space Command, General Dorn stayed awake for three days straight monitoring the events. Right now, he observed the orbital tracks of Aurora and S. S. Volnos approach rendezvous. Doubtless the refueling would proceed swiftly and safely. He came to expect that from this new breed of spacefarer. The fuel brought up by the ship was not much, but flight after flight would bring enough of it to make two engines useful. And Larry Poubelle just keeps routing those donations from Dædalus to the Ad Hoc Committee to Rescue Volnos.

Dorn looked as if he had spent a month living on the streets, and he felt like it, too. The full political, economic, and social impact of these space flights -- the public ones and most especially the clandestine ones -- were yet to hit. Short of outright attack -- and he knew full well how Monty Barron had failed in that tactic -- Space Station Volnos would continue to orbit the Earth with impunity, broadcasting whatever messages Grant wanted, manufacturing and deorbiting anything Grant possessed the raw materials to build or grow. And anyone who succeeded in launching a rocket into orbit -- which now appeared simpler than ever -- could resupply the station or, God forbid, lob up a second fully-built platform.

All this disturbed the general. A minuscule muscle under his left eye twitched incessantly. He knew more than nearly any other man about the theory and practice of war in Space. The one subject never dealt with in any seminar or think-tank piece was the absurd notion that government -- the very concept of government -- would be left behind by spacefarers in their exodus. That Space would become a frontier not in the sense of a new national border, but a frontier of unlimited wilderness, welcoming an unregulated, uncontrolled, possibly unconquerable horde of pioneers, settlers, and traders, separated by vast seas of Space, yet connected intimately by encrypted communications links and a shared distrust of all terrestrial authority.

"General..."

The voice broke his prognostic trance and he focused on Capt. Lee, who continued. "We have a confirmed rocket plume rising from Southern Russia. It's not from Plesetsk or Baikonur."

"Russia?" Dorn mused, looking upward at the huge screen. On it, a cherry-red curve rose from south of Rubcovsk. A 3-D rendering of the flight path predicted its insertion into an orbit very close to the 51.6° inclination of the ghost space station Mir.

Dorn's mind raced. A Russian presence in Space changed the recently upset power equation yet again. Though he expressed a low opinion of them otherwise, one thing he knew for certain was that no Russian could go for long without desiring some form of global domination. The possibility of exploiting this new factor expanded his options vastly.

Perhaps, he mused in silence, the Space Cadets have not heard the last from us Grub Eaters.


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