CHAPTER 43

All men should try to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
-- James Thurber

5 August

Barry Gibbon stopped walking for fifteen seconds, long enough to check his pulse. Twenty-eight, he thought, times four is one hundred-twelve. He resumed his stride across Washington Square toward the NYU campus. He stepped over a bum who stared upward with glazed eyes. We're all in the gutter, but still gazing at the stars.

Gibbon pondered a problem. Not merely his own personal problem, but a problem for all humanity.

Dean Everett Stevens suspected that an equipment-theft ring existed, fencing stolen lab articles, machinery, and computers. At his behest, Gibbon inspected the partial list of missing goods. In it, he saw a pattern, and that pattern disturbed him.

Every group requires a leader, every people a ruler. Despite his vocal appeals to democracy, Barry Gibbon knew that great deeds required great visionaries. He ruled his own National Organisation of Space Supporters with strong fist, albeit a fist hidden in the rafters, clutching the crux of many a marionette -- his chosen means of operation.

When students organized, it required a ringleader. And half a century in academia served to hone his judgment until he could target the perpetrator with a hunter's accuracy.

It had to be Crockett, he thought. His type fit the pattern: intelligent, restless, scornful of authority, a tinker, charismatic, handsome.

He stopped to wheeze.

Gibbon's multitude of activities created a strain on his health. Still astonishingly spry for a man of his age, he knew that he must pace himself, hence the occasional pulse checks. An old man's habit! he mentally chided, for a spinoff of NASA research encircled one of his coronary arteries, constantly monitoring his blood pressure, pulse, and blood-oxygen level. It had been developed by one of the many students he had steered from space medicine into geriatrics by pointing out that what we learn on Earth prolonging lives now can only help space travelers thirty years from now.

Tomorrow he would board a plane to Edwards Air Force base to plead with the commander not to encourage Laurence Poubelle's publicity-grabbing stunt. After the record-setting test flight, the commander -- an ex-test pilot -- seemed of the opinion that a civilian test-pilot had as much right to use Rogers Dry Lake as anyone from NASA. Also near the Edwards and Vandenberg sites lurked a far more significant threat: Freespace Orbital and that pest who refused to fade away -- Gerald Cooper.

Cooper presented a much greater threat than the grandstanding Poubelle, though the billionaire appeared likely to orbit his little toy first. Cooper possessed the vision of a complete space launch system and -- worse -- an overall plan for what to do with it. This business with Leora Thane and tourists. For the past three decades, Gibbon's various organizations continually fielded queries from the idle rich asking when routine tours would be available. The money was out there to fund Cooper's enterprise, money that Gibbon could not coax into NOSS's coffers.

A contingency plan arose in Gibbon's mind: if against all efforts Cooper succeeded, then perhaps a fifty percent tax on the ticket price of flights would bring in revenue that would otherwise be wasted on such foolish indulgences. He smiled. He would propose that to his good friend Senator Woolsey.

First, though, the problem of Davy Crockett and his buckskin brigade.

***

Crockett flopped, exhausted, into the chair opposite Gibbon in the professor's cramped office, a sure sign of something in the works.

"Mr. Crockett," he said, pressing his palms together in a calculated gesture of pleasure. "How nice that we can at last meet without the distractions of a seminar."

Crockett drawled up his Tennessee accent, "You didn't tell me why you wanted me here, but if it's about my attendance, I've--"

"Not at all, David, not at all." He gazed at the younger man for a moment, sizing him up now that they sat near each other. His thin tongue licked quickly at his lips before he spoke. With a smile that bespoke an expansive and all-embracing friendliness, he said, "I know we've exchanged a few heated words in the master-pupil context, but I believe that is due more to a clash of superior intellects than a conflict of values."

"We believe what we choose to," Crockett said flatly.

"Yes... And I was so intrigued by your, shall we say, firm opinions that I was impelled to look at your scholastic record. You must trust me when I say it astonished me."

"I'm a trusting sort."

Gibbon eyed him and for just a moment a shade of annoyance scrunched his eyebrows. Recovering, he said, "Despite your, um, extracurricular activities, your grades are impeccable. I note, however, that you seem to lack direction in your field of endeavor. You have not yet specialized."

"Maybe I've got catholic interests." He punctuated the sentence with a wide grin and reached for a cheroot.

Gibbon nearly objected, then mentally bit his tongue and proceeded while Crockett lit up. "You've exhibited an interest in the space program, even if only to denounce it. As you know, The National Organisation of Space Supporters is actively involved in directing and influencing national -- and now international -- space policy. I think your obvious talent for rallying teamwork could produce results if you became part of NOSS. I foresee a future for you at the highest levels in Washington or even New York. Certainly, with the loss of Constitution and the Space Center, there is a crying need to reinvent NASA--"

Crockett stood. "Thank goodness this is a bribe. I thought you were going to discuss my grades." He blew an exquisite smoke ring that sailed directly toward Gibbon's face, framing it like the circle around a bullseye. "I can't be drawn into serving those I oppose." He rose to leave.

"It's a chance to change things for the better. To bend the program toward goals you think it should pursue."

"The only thing that would get bent," Crockett said at the door, "is my own moral backbone. Find yourself another dupe. You've got quite a pool to pick from."

The door closed quietly behind him. Gibbon stared at the frosted pane set in it and pondered the problem. Perhaps more student outreach is called for. There would be time for that. Gibbon was a busy man, and the next item on his agenda he considered a higher priority: Freespace Orbital and its damned Starblazer. Picking up the latest copy of The Private Space Journal -- a magazine he would never admit to reading and that he subscribed to under an assumed name -- he skimmed a report on the improvements made to the design, along with a proposed launch date within the next few days. He smiled wanly. He had stopped such upstarts before, and he would again. Cooper, however, was so close that personal intervention was called for.

Gibbon looked forward to a trip to the Mojave desert. He preferred dry heat to the dreadful humidity gripping Manhattan this time of year.

7 August

The knock at the door startled Cooper. Nearly midnight, the airport lay still and dead but for the occasional aircraft landing or taking off every hour or so. He saved the notes he had been dictating to the computer and walked to the outer office. In light of what happened to Larry Poubelle, Cooper now kept a loaded Astra Constable .380 autopistol with him while working nights. And most days, too. Hand on the grip, he switched on the outside lights to see the incongruous form of Barry Gibbon standing in the glowing golden beam, surrounded by darkness.

Puzzled, he released his hold on the weapon and hurried to unlock the door.

"Dr. Gibbon?" His voice possessed more than curiosity; it held an edgy foreboding aggravated by overwork and undersleep.

"Gerald, my dear boy, everyone else is at Vandenberg for your rocket's test day after tomorrow. Why did you make it so hard for me to find you?" He glided through the doorway and into the inner office. Mystified, Cooper locked the door and followed him, rubbing meditatively at the three-day growth of stubble on his chin.

"You look like simple hell, my friend, certainly not like someone about--"

"I was doing some last minute design rechecks. It's quiet out..." He peered at Gibbon with intense curiosity. "Why are you here?"

Gibbon sat in front of Cooper's desk in a posture he calculated to be of the necessary humility to make the pitch work. "Gerald, you've worked hard and long on the Starblazer design, and I've been so impressed by your work -- as you know -- that I've twisted some arms at NASA via some long-time NOSS members. They're poised to move into the management positions opened by the crash and have agreed in principle to test the Starblazer concept for use in the Advanced Light Lifter Unmanned Rocket Experiment."

Cooper sat behind the desk and leaned forward on one elbow, resting his head on his fingertips. In the corner of his eye he could see that the computer was still recording his words, making both a digital sound recording and a word-to-text transcription. It also picked up Gibbon's conversation, but even though he knew it hogged memory, he was too tired to switch the program off. "You'll have to pardon me," he said. "I've gone for three days straight without sleep."

Good, thought Gibbon. The perfect time for poor decisions. He nodded his head with restrained sympathy.

"What makes you think," Cooper said levelly, "that I care what anyone at NASA does?"

"Gerald, they are offering to fund your research and put all of their influence behind you. This could make Starblazer the satellite launch system of the next millennium!"

Cooper straightened up and placed his palms on the desk. "It will be that. And more, without NASA. With Leora Thane's backing--"

"Why are you wasting time with that shrewish ticket-hawker? Why demean yourself hauling about shiploads of idle gawking tourists when the Agency has satellites and planetary probes sitting waiting for lau--"

"I want to haul tourists!" Cooper said angrily. "Gawkers and pointers and wide-eyed kids who leave fingerprints and nose marks on the windows! I want to lift up workers and miners and settlers with callused hands who'll risk everything they own, who'll risk their lives just for the chance to live in a new world and make it theirs. I want to cram every ship to the bulkheads with the restless, the dissatisfied, the eager. I want to help everyone who's ever itched with the emigrant's urge to make a new start. For that, I don't need any so-called help from the Agency, or from you. I was tempted once to jump through your hoops, and I won't bother again. I don't need NASA."

"Yes, you do." Something altered in Gibbon's expression and his tone. His wan, humble smile did not alter, and his voice held the same tone, yet something about both seemed harder, less willing to maintain any pretense of civilized conduct. "You need NASA to stay out of your way. You need NASA not to use its influence in the ærospace community or in the military. You need NASA to sign off on your launch Friday--"

"They already have."

"A middle-management employee, if I'm not mistaken." Gibbon shook his head. "Some members of the press might look at that as your taking advantage of confusion stemming from a major tragedy. It appears so, shall we say, ruthlessly exploitative that it is certain to trigger congressional inquiry."

Cooper fumbled for a packet of cigarettes. "So what you're saying"--his hands trembled from weariness--"is that I've got to play along or you'll make it tough to conduct my business."

Gibbon, keenly observing every nuance of Cooper's body language -- the tic under his left eye, the shaky hand, the nervous, darting gaze -- adjudged the rocket designer to be very near a breakdown. Instead of following his original intent of seducing Cooper into compromise, Gibbon suddenly decided to go for the kill.

"No, my friend. Whether you play along or not, I will make it impossible for you to conduct your business. And I will thereby be saving your life. Here's why." He leaned back in the chair, humble no more, speaking with a cool arrogance. "You would be dead, Gerald. Dead, because the military does not want and has never wanted a civilian presence in space. You think you've received roadblocks from NASA? Wait until the Pentagon sets its sights on you. You don't honestly believe that they simply forgot to inform you about the valve-frosting problem at Vandenberg, do you?"

Cooper stared. "How did you--?"

A crooked smile crossed Gibbon's thin lips. "I don't operate in a vacuum. I have an interest in knowing what all you subnationals are up to. That's the term we use to describe your kind. A little condescending, but then you play a fairly meager role in space, don't you? Nobody in the satellite community takes you seriously, not when they know that the military and NASA legally control all launches in the country and that all it takes is a little sabotage to scatter your spacecraft across the sky."

"They wouldn't do that!" Then he remembered Colonel Lundy's warning: Range Safety is very important to monitor.

"My boy, they have been doing it for years. Even the big players have had their share of mysterious failures. Strings of bad luck in recent years. Time-tested designs failing one after another. People who founded their own rocket companies -- even seemingly acceptable people such as former intelligence agents and ex-astronauts -- have turned up dead of brain tumors, or in traffic accidents."

"There was a company that didn't encounter any of that. I remember."

Gibbon smiled. "That was an aberration. NASA agreed to help because they never expected a winged, horizontally launched booster to work. They learned from that mistake." He shook his head pitifully. "No, my boy, whatever successes your little private efforts have had have all been at the mercy of a system designed to keep you earthbound. 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. Imagine what would happen if someone captured just one asteroid and fractioned out the metals it held. Prices and markets would collapse everywhere. And you can 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."

Cooper said nothing for a moment, his hand resting under his jacket on the grip of his handgun. After a long moment, he released it; when he spoke, his voice rasped. "This is not my country anymore."

Gibbon snorted. "It never was. This is the real world. Learn the rules."

As if in a dream, Cooper stood. "I have to go to Vandenberg. I have a launch in..." He looked at his watch. "In T-minus thirty-one hours."

"I promise you, Gerald, it will not go up. Something will cause it to fail. And if you persist in the matter, well..." He gazed at Cooper with eyes no longer limpid, but glinting like flint knives. "You don't have any children, but they know you have a wife."

"Get out," Cooper said, then he shouted, "I was an idiot ever to trust you!"

Gibbon rose to say, in a courtly tone, "And I saw that you remained a living idiot. Now that you've gained your new-found wisdom, I can do nothing more to protect you." He walked out of the office, turned at the door to smile and wave, then climbed into the limousine parked unobtrusively on the side of the hangar.

"Wait here a moment," Gibbon said to his driver.

After a few minutes, Cooper stormed out of his office, locked up, and jumped into his Corvette. The engine roared into life.

"Follow him," Gibbon muttered.

***

The hot August air blew through the Mojave night with the languid force of a determined woman. Not moving fast enough to be overpowering, it was still a factor to be reckoned with.

Cooper wrenched the steering wheel of his vintage 1961 Corvette Stingray to the left, compensating for the incessant wind that sought to push him off the narrow Soledad Canyon Road. It served as a shortcut from the Antelope Valley Freeway to the 126 near Magic Mountain. The 126 turned into the Santa Paula Freeway, which led to Pierpont Bay and the 101. From there, his 'vette would take him down the Cabrillo Highway from Las Cruces to Lompoc, then down the 246 into Vandenberg. The trip would take less than three hours, especially if he could crank it up to eighty miles per hour most of the way.

The Corvette's headlights now and then illuminated a Joshua tree, causing Cooper to flinch at the sudden appearance of what looked like a standing figure. Every jerk pushed the steering wheel a fraction to one side or another, creating a swerve that he fought to correct.

He tried to think, to put the rush of emotion aside and simply deal with facts. He knew the science behind space travel. He spent his life studying engineering, astrophysics, chemistry, calculus, fluid dynamics. He knew that launching rockets involved a relatively simple process. Why, then had so many different groups encountered so many problems gaining a toehold in Space? With the swiftness of a sword, Gibbon had cut through all of Cooper's naïvity and handed him the answer like his heart on a skewer. And that answer mixed tears of anguish with a sweat of terror to blur his view of the thin grey ribbon weaving left and right endlessly before him. He glanced at the rear-view mirror to see headlights behind him in the distance. He realized now that Thom Brodsky's paranoia was not merely horribly correct, it expressed pitiable optimism compared to the truth. He touched at his jacket's inside left pocket for reassurance. There, next to the stale victory cigar given him months ago by Larry Poubelle, rested his warning to mankind.

The headlights gained on him. His foot jammed down on the accelerator. Seventy, eighty, eighty-five, ninety. Swerve left, veer right. The smell of desert-dry earth choked his nostrils. Gravel flung from his tire treads knocked and rang against fiberglass and steel with the sound of bullets. Even above the roar of the Corvette's engine, Cooper's heart pounded in his rib cage like a trapped animal.

He thundered westward over the knife's edge of pavement, roaring past the town of Honby. The starry night sky battled with the full Moon for supremacy and lost. Even the Moon, though, faded in the lights that blazed down the road.

Cooper's breath raced. He slammed the accelerator all the way to the floor. Like a rocket, the Stingray surged forward. His arms ached to keep the wheel centered. Desert insects exploded against the windshield like meteors.

The speeding man risked one more frantic glance into the rear view mirror. It proved to be his last voluntary act.

The Corvette screamed off the ribbon of earth and into the canyon wall. Momentum tossed it up the side and into the air.

Spiraling in space for an instant, Gerry Cooper's last vision was of the Moon -- fat, white, and round -- spinning madly out of his reach forever.


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