“Tell that to my wife’s brother in Bethesda, sir. He was supposed to start reroofing his house this week. He’s delaying work until he knows for sure where the rock is going to end up.”
The President grinned. “A fatalist, eh?”
Earle glanced at his boss. “Not really, sir. I was the one who told him to hold off.”
Fraser lost the smile. “You really think this may fail and the asteroid will come down?”
“I don’t know, sir. As a scientist, I’m obligated to consider and prepare for every possible eventuality.” It was his turn to smile. “I feel like the coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. There’s an anvil coming straight for me and all I can stick between it and my head is a dinky little black umbrella.” He returned his attention to the sky. “I’d feel a lot better if we knew the exact composition of that asteroid. Some of the readings that are coming in are seriously skewed. A few are downright contradictory.”
“And you’re concerned that without knowing the precise composition, the planned placement of the nuclear explosives may be flawed.”
Earle wasn’t surprised. The President was a master of unexpected knowledge. It was a survival skill.
“That’s right, sir. It isn’t that I’m not confident. Everything has been carefully worked out and calibrated and rechecked via simulation. It’s just that I’m not a hundred-percent positive.”
Fraser smiled encouragingly. “If you were, you wouldn’t be much of a scientist, Willy.”
“So this is weightlessness.” Contrasted with her carefully polished veneer of sophistication, Maggie Robbins’s girlish delight seemed even more ingenuous. “What a gas!”
“Lack of,” Miles corrected her. The payload specialist was secured in her chair, running preliminary operations checks on the manipulator arm and related instrumentation.
Up front, Low and Borden monitored the shuttle’s status and position. They would come up on the asteroid from below and behind, like a white shark stalking a seal. The slower their approach, the less fuel they’d have to burn to consummate the rendezvous.
“I know you checked out,” Miles observed, “but you’d be surprised how different people react. No nausea at all?” A smiling Robbins shook her head. “That’s good. I’m too busy to clean up after you.”
Borden glanced back at the floating journalist. “Me, I’ve always found weightlessness sort of a cross between approaching heaven and feeling like you’re going to puke every minute. You can quote me on that.”
“Not sure I want to, Ken.” Using the shuttle’s built-in handholds, she carefully maneuvered herself around to face the front of the ship, hovering near the ceiling so that she could watch the two pilots at work. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“There isn’t anything else like it.” Low turned his head. “Watch yourself. There are instruments up there also. Near your left arm.”
“Oh, sorry.” Robbins adjusted her position, bumped her right leg and stabilized herself. “I’m still trying to get the hang of this.” Her smile widened. “So to speak.”
Absorbed in the swarm of readouts, Low didn’t reciprocate. He’d smile later, when they’d finished the job.
Borden stepped in. “That’s all right, darlin’. You’re doing fine. Just whatever you do, don’t hit that button right there.”
An anxious Robbins twisted to her left. “What? What button?”
“That one, that one right there!” Borden exclaimed, his voice rising.
A panicked Robbins drew in her arms and legs, fearful of making contact with the dreaded switch. Clasped into a ball, she began to spin toward the back of the cockpit, extended her limbs, and finally managed to steady herself by latching onto a handle. Anxious eyes sought those of the copilot.
“What did I do? What did I almost hit?”
Borden took a deep breath and pointed. “See that red depression up there, near where you were floating? That’s the emergency eject. One tap on that, and foom!” He spread both arms wide. “The whole canopy comes off, our parachute systems engage, and we’re blown out into the atmosphere for emergency descent. Except that we’re no longer in atmosphere and we’d all explosively decompress before we could freeze to death or die of suffocation.”
Robbins turned slightly green. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.” She eyed the ominous depression. “You’d think they’d put some sort of safety shield over a control as critical as that. There should be…”
She stopped in midsentence, having espied something she hadn’t seen since she’d first stepped aboard the shuttle. It was Boston Low. He was smiling. Striving mightily not to, and failing. It had welled up within him and was threatening, despite his best efforts, to break free.
The sun was coming up over the terminator line, and with it dawning realization.
“Hey, wait a minute.” Her gaze shifted from mission commander to copilot and back again. “Something that sensitive would be protected from casual contact. Hell, I bet it wouldn’t work outside the atmosphere anyway. It wouldn’t even be operated manually, because in an emergency you wouldn’t have time to activate it and…”
Borden couldn’t hold it in anymore. He burst out laughing, only to have it echoed by Miles. “Hey,” she shouted forward, “pack it in, Ken. Don’t you know that unrestrained levity is against NASA in-flight regulations?”
“Put me on report!” Tears were streaming down the copilot’s face. That is, on the ground they would have been streaming. In the cockpit they broke away in tiny perfect globules and went bobbing off in all directions, eventually to be captured by the ship’s disapproving cleaning and purification system.
“Besides, I’m being comparatively restrained. Boston’s the one you need to report.” A cackling Borden nodded in the Commander’s direction. “You know Boz. When he hears something funny, he just can’t control himself. I mean, look at him! It’s positively obscene.”
Low shot his friend a glance. He didn’t exactly collapse under the weight of unrequited hilarity, but something not unlike a chuckle did finally escape from his quivering lips.
Robbins actually blushed slightly, then nodded portentously. “That’s right, have your little joke. I’ll see that this is reported appropriately.”
“See that you do.” Borden wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand. “I always like to see credit given where it’s due.”
The last of the tension broken, Low called back to the others. “Cora, Ludger, how are you two doing?”
“We’re fine, Boston,” Miles responded. “The arm system checks out perfectly. Other than that, I just want to go on record as saying how much I enjoy shepherding such a nice, safe cargo and to remind anyone listening that my will and testament can be found in my safe-deposit box at the Bank of Galveston, Second Street and Houston.
“Unofficially, I’d rather deal with nuclear explosives than certain people in Washington.” She nodded toward their resident scientist. “But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Ludger?”
“Nein? You should try securing a reasonable appropriation from the EEC Committee on Space. Believe me, Brussels is as difficult to work with as Washington, plus you are expected to work in six languages. The only difference when scientific appropriations are involved is that Americans yell and scream at each other all the time, whereas Europeans only do so in public and then go out peacefully together to enjoy expensive gourmet meals at the public’s expense. I’ve shared some of the best wine and food of my life with people who had just spent the entire day deriding my requests for a few extra pounds, guilders, deutsche marks or francs for additional research. If I was given half the money Brussels bureaucrats spend on meals and after-hours entertainment in one year, I could fund my own laboratory.”
Miles chuckled sympathetically, then turned serious. “You really think this will work, Ludger? I know what all the experts have said.” She nodded in the direction of the nearest port and its panorama of the rotating Earth. “But they’re down there now and we’re up here. How about an uncensored opinion?”
Brink replied with ducal gravity. “The calculations have been run thousands of times, the simulations hundreds of times. They insist this will work. There is no question in my mind that if the power of the explosives has been properly gauged and they are correctly emplaced, the orbit of the asteroid can be adjusted.”
Miles nodded. “Me, I’ll be glad when it’s over and done with.”
“We all will.” Brink’s smile was pleasant enough, she thought, but lacking in something. Energy, perhaps, or enthusiasm. It had been adequate, however, to charm millions out of various government agencies in a dozen countries.
“What’s wrong, Cora?” Borden glanced back from the copilot’s chair. “Afraid that if something goes wrong, it’ll cost you the election?”
“Actually, I should be, but I’m not. You know me, Ken. When we’re out here, nothing else matters except the job.”
“Yeah, sure,” he deadpanned.
“This is not only exciting,” announced Robbins, “it’s fun. They don’t tell you about that part.” She continued to acclimate herself to the wonder of weightlessness, using the handholds to pull herself back and forth through the cabin, occasionally hanging upside down like a bat with her feet touching the ceiling. Everyone knew she didn’t belong aboard, including Robbins herself, but her enthusiasm was infectious. It made it hard to take umbrage at her presence for very long.