The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 24

  Anyway, that had happened months earlier, and now the superconducting coils had finally arrived at the Cape and Sam had to buzz over there to inspect them. Leaving Bonnie Jo and me alone in the office. Friday afternoon. The weekend looming.

  I did my level best to avoid her. She was staying at the Marriott hotel in Titusville, so I steered clear of the whole town. Kept to myself in my little rattrap of a one-room apartment. Worked on my laptop all day Saturday, ate a microwaved dinner, watched TV. Then worked some more. Did not phone her, although I thought about it now and then. Maybe once every other minute.

  Sunday it rained hard. I started to feel like a convict in prison. By noontime I had convinced myself that there was work to do in the office; anything to get out of my room. It was pouring so thick I got soaked running from my parking space to the covered stairs that led up to our office. First thing I did there was phone Sam’s hotel down at the Cape. Checked out. Then I phoned his apartment. Not there.

  I slid into my desk chair, squishing wet. Okay. He’s back from the Cape. He’s with Bonnie Jo. Good. I guess.

  But I guessed wrong, because Bonnie Jo came into the office, brighter than sunshine in a bright yellow slicker and plastic rain hat.

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  “Where’s Sam?” I asked her.

  She peeled off the hat and slicker. “I thought he’d be here. Probably he stayed at the Cape for the weekend.”

  “Yeah. He’s got a lot of old buddies at the Cape.”

  “And girlfriends?”

  “Uh, no. Not really.” I was never much good at shading the truth.

  Bonnie Jo sat at her desk and picked up the phone. “Highway Patrol,” she said to the dialing assistance computer program.

  She saw my eyebrows hike up.

  “On a stormy day like this, maybe he drove off the road.”

  The Highway Patrol had no accidents to report between where we were and the Cape. I puffed out a little sigh of relief. Bonnie Jo put the phone down with a bit of a dark frown on her pretty face.

  “You worry about Sam that much?” I asked her.

  “My job is to protect my daddy’s investment,” she said. “And my own.”

  Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it we were having dinner together in the Japanese restaurant down at the end of the mall. I had to teach Bonnie Jo how to use chopsticks. She caught on real fast. Quick learner.

  “Are you two engaged, or what?” I heard myself ask her.

  She smiled, kind of sad, almost. “It depends on who you ask. My father considers us engaged, although Sam has never actually popped the question to me.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Her eyes went distant. “Sam is going to be a very rich man someday. He has the energy and drive and willingness to swim against the tide, and that will make him a multimillionaire eventually. If somebody doesn’t strangle him first.”

  “So that makes him a good marriage prospect.”

  Her unhappy little smile came back. “Sam will make a terrible husband. He’s a womanizer who doesn’t give a thought to anybody but himself. He’s lots of fun to be with, but he’d be hell to be married to.”

  “Then why... ?”

  “I already told you. To protect my daddy’s investment.”

  “You’d marry him? For that?”

  “Why not? He’ll have his flings, I’ll have mine. As long as I can present my daddy with a grandson, everyone will be satisfied.”

  “But... love. What about love?”

  Her smile turned bitter. “You mean like Melinda and Larry? That’s for the peasants. In my family marriage is a business proposition.”

  I dropped the chunk of sushi in my chopsticks right into my lap.

  Bonnie Jo leaned across the little table. “You’re really a very romantic guy, aren’t you, Spence? Have I shocked you?”

  “Uh, no, not... well, I guess I never met a woman with your outlook on life.”

  “Never dated an MBA before?” Her eyes sparkled with amusement now. She was teasing me.

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  She leaned closer. “Sam’s out at the Cape chasing cocktail waitresses and barmaids. Maybe I ought to go to a bar and see what I can pick up.”

  “Maybe you ought to go home before you pick up something that’ll increase your father’s health insurance premiums,” I said, suddenly feeling sore at her.

  She gave me a long look. “Maybe I should, at that.”

  And that was our dinner together. I never touched her. I never told Sam about it. But the next morning when he showed up at the office looking like every blue Monday morning in the history of the world—bleary-eyed, pasty-faced, muttering about vitamin E—I knew I couldn’t hang around there with Bonnie Jo so close.

  Melinda and Larry arrived hand in hand. I swear his stuttering had cleared up almost entirely in just that one weekend. Bonnie Jo came in around ten, took a silent look at Sam, and went to her desk as cool as liquid nitrogen. Sam was inhaling coffee and orange juice in roughly equal quantities.

  “Sam,” I said, my voice so loud that it startled me, “since I’m president of this outfit, I’ve just made an executive decision.”

  He looked over toward me with bloodshot eyes.

  “I’m going over to the Cape,” I announced.

  “I was just there,” he croaked.

  “I mean to stay. Hardware’s starting to arrive. We need somebody to direct the assembly technicians, somebody there on the scene all the time, not just once a week. Somebody with the power to make decisions.”

  “The techs know what they’re doing.better than you do, Mutt,” argued Sam. “If they run into any problems they’ve got phones, e-mail, faxes— they can even use the agency’s video link if they have to.”

  “It’ll be better if I’m on the scene,” I insisted, trying not to look at Bonnie Jo. “We can settle questions before they become problems.”

  Sam shook his head stubbornly. “We haven’t budgeted for you to be living in a hotel at the Cape. You know how tight everything is.”

  “The budget can be stretched,” Bonnie Jo said. “I think Spence is right. His being on the Cape could save us a lot of problems.”

  Sam’s head swiveled from her to me and back to her again. He looked puzzled, not suspicious. Finally he shrugged good-naturedly and said, “Okay, as long as it won’t bust the bank.”

  So I moved to the Cape. During the weeks I was there supervising the assembly and checkout of our equipment I actually did save a couple of minor glitches from growing into real headaches. Larry drove over once a week to check the hardware against his design; then he’d drive back to Melinda again that evening. I knew I could justify the expenses legitimately, if to came to that. Most important, though, was that I had put some miles between myself and Bonnie Jo. And she must have realized how attracted I was to her, because she convinced Sam I should get away.

  A couple of my old agency buddies snuck me some time on the OMV simulator, so I spent my evenings and spare weekends brushing up on my flying. Our official program didn’t call for any use of orbital maneuvering vehicles. What we had proposed was to set up our magnetic bumper on the forward end of space station Freedom and see how well it deflected junk out of the station’s orbital path. Called for some EVA work, but we wouldn’t need to fly OMVs.

  But Sam had warned me to be prepared for flying an OMV, back when we first started writing the proposal.

  “Whattaya think we oughtta do,” he had asked me, “if we scoop up something valuable?”

  “Valuable?” I had asked.

  “Like that glove Ed White lost. Or the famous Hasselblad camera from back in the Gemini days.”

  I stared at him. “Sam, those things reentered and burned up years ago.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He flapped an annoyed hand in the air. “But suppose—just suppose, now—that we scoop up something like that.”

  We had been sitting in our f
avorite booth in our favorite bar. Sam liked Corona in those days; slices of lime were littered across his side of the table, with little plastic spears stuck in their sides. They looked like tiny green harpooned whales. Me, I liked beer with more flavor to it: Bass Ale was my favorite.

  Anyway, I thought his question was silly.

  “In the first place,” I said, “the magnetic field won’t scoop up objects; it’ll deflect them away from the path of the station. Most of them will be bounced into orbits that’ll spiral into the atmosphere. They’ll reenter and burn up.”

  “But suppose we got to something really valuable,” Sam insisted. “Like a spacer section from the Brazilian booster. Or a piece of that European upper stage that blew up. Analysts would pay good money to get their hands on junk like that.”

  “Analysts?”

  “In Washington,” Sam said. “Or Paris, for that matter. Hell, even our buddy D’Argent would like to be able to present his Rockledge lab boys with chunks of the competition’s hardware.”

  I had never thought of that.

  “Then there’s the museums,” Sam went on, kind of dreamy, the way he always gets when he’s thinking big. “How much would the Smithsonian pay for the Eagle?”

  “The Apollo 11 lunar module?”

  “Its lower section is still up there, sitting on the Sea of Tranquility.”

  “But that’s the Moon, Sam. A quarter-million miles away from where we’ll be!”

  He gave me his sly grin. “Brush up on your flying, Mutt. There are interesting times ahead. Ve-r-r-y interesting.”

  I could see taking an OMV from the space station and flitting out to retrieve some hunk of debris that looked important or maybe valuable. So I spent as many of my hours at the Cape as possible in the OMV simulator. It helped to keep me busy; helped me to not think about Bonnie Jo.

  At first I thought it was an accident when I bumped into Pierre D’Argent in the Shuttle Lounge. It was mid-afternoon, too soon for the after-work crowd. The lounge was cool and so dark that you could break your neck tripping over cocktail tables before your eyes adjusted from the summer glare outside.

  I actually did bump into D’Argent. He was sitting with his back to the aisle between tables, wearing an expensive dark suit that blended into the shadows so well I just didn’t see him.

  I started to apologize, then my eyes finally adjusted to the dimness and I saw who he was.

  “Mr. Johansen!” He professed surprise and asked me to join him.

  So I sat at his little table. With my back to the wall. Just the two of us, although there were a few regulars up at the bar watching a baseball game from Japan.

  I ordered a Bass. D’Argent already had a tall frosted glass of something in front of him, decorated with enough fruit slices to start a plantation. And a little paper umbrella.

  “Your friend Gunn sent our legal department into quite a spin,” he said, smiling with his teeth.

  “Sam’s a very emotional guy,” I said as the waitress brought my ale. She was a cute little thing, in a low-cut black outfit with a teeny-tiny skirt.

  “Yes, he is indeed.” D’Argent let out a sigh. “I’m afraid Mr. Gunn has no clear idea of where his own best interests lie.”

  I took a sip of ale instead of trying to answer.

  “Now you, Mr. Johansen,” he went on, “you look like someone who understands where your best interests lie.”

  All I could think of to say was, “Really?”

  “Really.” D’Argent leaned back in his chair, looking like a cool million on the hoof: elegant from his slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair to the tips of his Gucci suede loafers.

  “I must confess that I thought your technical proposal was little short of daring. Much better than the job my own technical people did. They were far too conservative. Far too.”

  Was he pumping me for information? I mumbled something noncommittal and let him go on talking.

  “In fact,” he said, smiling at me over his fruit salad, “I think your technical approach is brilliant. Breathtaking.”

  The smile was very slick. He was insurance-salesman handsome. Trim gray mustache neatly clipped; expensive silk suit, dark gray. I couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, the lighting in the lounge was too dim, but I expect they were gray too.

  I shrugged off his compliment. But he persisted. “A magnetic deflector system actually mounted on the space station. Very daring. Very original.”

  “It was Sam’s idea,” I said, trying to needle him.

  It didn’t faze him a bit. “It was actually the idea of Professor Luke Steckler, of Texas A&M. Our people saw his paper in the technical literature, but they didn’t have the guts to use the idea. You did.”

  “Sam did.”

  He hiked his eyebrows a bit. They were gray, too. “You’re much too modest, Spence. You don’t mind if I call you Spence, do you?”

  I did mind. I suddenly felt like I was in the grip of a very slick used-car salesman. But I shook my head and hid behind my mug of ale.

  D’Argent said, “Spence, I know that my technical people at Rockledge would love to have you join their team. They need some daring, someone willing to take chances.”

  I guess my eyebrows went up, too.

  Leaning forward over the tiny table, D’Argent added in a whisper, “And we’ll pay you twice what Gunn is paying.”

  I blinked. Twice.

  The lounge was slowly filling up with “happy hour” customers: mostly engineers from the base and sales people trying to sell them stuff. They all talked low, almost in whispers. At least, until they got a couple of drinks

  into them. Then the noise volume went up and some of the wilder ones even would laugh now and then. But while I was sitting there trying to digest D’Argent’s offer without spitting beer in his face, I could still hear the soft-rock music coming through the ceiling speakers, something old and sad by the Carpenters.

  “I would like you to talk with a few of my technical people, Spence. Would you be willing to do that?”

  Twice my VCI salary. And that was just for openers. It was obvious he’d be willing to go higher. Maybe a lot higher. I’d been living on Happy Hour hors d’oeuvres and junk food. I was four months behind on the rent for my seedy dump of an apartment—which was sitting empty, because of Bonnie Jo.

  But I shook my head. “I’m happy with VCI.” Happy wasn’t exactly the right word, but I couldn’t leave Sam in the lurch. On the other hand, this might be the best way to make a break with Bonnie Jo.

  Turning slightly in his chair, D’Argent sort of nodded toward a trio of guys in suits sitting a few tables away from us.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of asking a few of my technical people to come here to meet you. Would you be willing to talk with them, Spence? Just for a few minutes.”

  Son of a bitch! It was no accident that we bumped into each other. It was a planned ambush.

  “I think, with your help, we can adapt the magnetic bumper concept easily enough,” he was saying, silky-smooth. “We’d even pay you a sizable bonus for joining Rockledge: say, a year’s salary.”

  They wanted to steal Sam’s idea and squeeze him out of the picture. And they thought I’d help them do it. For money.

  I got to my feet. “Mr. D’Argent, Rockledge doesn’t have enough money in its whole damned corporate treasury to buy me away from VCI.”

  D’Argent shrugged, very European-like, and made a disappointed sigh. “Very well, although your future would be much more secure with Rockledge than with a con-man such as Mr. Gunn.”

  Through gritted teeth I said, “I’ll take my chances with Sam.” And I stalked out of the lounge, leaving him sitting there.

  “THAT WAS A pretty noble thing to do,” Jade said.

  They were more than halfway through their dinners. She had ordered trout from the habitat’s aquaculture tanks. Johansen was eating braised rabbit. Jade had to remind herself that rabbit was bred for meat here in

  the space habitat, just as it was on S
elene. But she had never eaten rabbit at home and she could not bring herself to order it here.

  “Nothing noble about it,” he said easily. “It made me feel kind of slimy just to be sitting at the same table with D’Argent. Working with the ... gentleman, well, I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Even though you were trying to get away from Bonnie Jo.”

  He shook his head slightly, as if disappointed with himself. “That was the really tough part. I wanted to get away from her and I wanted to be with her, both at the same time.”

  “So what did you do?”

  He grinned. “I got away. I went up to space station Freedom.”

  SAM HAD SERVED aboard Freedom when he’d been in the agency—Johansen explained. He was definitely persona non grata there, as far as the bureaucrats in Washington and the Cape were concerned, even though all the working stiffs—the astronauts and mission specialists—they all asked me how he was and when he would be coming up. Especially a couple of the women astronauts.

  Living aboard Freedom was sort of like living in a bad hotel, without gravity. The quarters were cramped, there was precious little privacy, the hot water was only lukewarm, and the food was as bland as only a government agency can make it. I spent ten-twelve hours a day inside a space suit, strapped into an MMU—a manned maneuvering unit—assembling our equipment on a special boom outside the station.

  The agency insisted that the magnetic field could not be turned on until every experiment being run inside the lab module was completed. Despite all our calculations and simulations (including a week’s worth of dry run on the station mock-up in Huntsville) the agency brass was worried that our magnetic field might screw up some delicate experiment the scientists were doing. It occurred to me that they didn’t seem worried about screwing up the station’s own instrumentation or life-support systems. That would just have threatened the lives of astronauts and mission specialists, not important people like university scientists sitting safe on their campuses.

  Anyway, after eleven days of living in that zero-gee tin can I got the go-ahead from mission control to turn on the magnetic field. Maybe the fact that one of the big solar panels got dinged with a stray chunk of junk hurried their decision. The panel damage cut the station’s electrical power by a couple of kilowatts.