A diffident Page leaned back against a rock. “Just being straightforward.” Reaching down, he picked up a pebble of his own and threw it. It didn’t reach the water. “You ever think about where that rock’s going to come down if it isn’t dealt with, Boz? If it isn’t pushed just right?” He gestured expansively. “It or a big hunk of it might come down right here. Right in the bay, or on the bridge. Or on your house.”
“Could happen anytime in the future too. If not this rock, another.”
“Yeah, but not everybody has your fatalistic outlook on time, Boston. If you won’t think about yourself, think about all those others. Think about your neighbors. Think about me.”
“I am thinking about all the others.” Low wanted to take the crab home, but knew it wouldn’t live long. “All the others who are qualified to command a mission like this. There’s Terrence…”
“Terrence the Trance?” Page gave back a look of disbelief.
“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.