Powersat

Matagorda Island, Texas

Within a few minutes, though, Vicki recovered from the emotional rush. Suddenly she was in a mad hurry to get back to her office in Houston. Chattering frantically into her cell phone as she scampered back down to Dan’s office, Vicki grabbed a gulp of warm orange juice that had been left on his desk and then headed for the door. Dan hustled after her, asking April to set up a corporate plane to take Vicki to Houston, then drove her to the airstrip in his convertible.

“Thanks, Dan, that was wonderful,” she said as he walked her to the waiting twin-jet Citation. She gave him a peck on the cheek. No sentimental good-byes, no “When will I see you again?” Just as well, Dan said to himself as he followed her down to the parking lot. Just as well.

Dan watched the plane take off, then drove back to his office the long way, around the airstrip and along the shore road, with the Gulf of Mexico lapping placidly against the white sand of the beach. Much of Matagorda Island had once been a ranch, its scrubby vegetation used as grazing for cattle. Decades earlier, a real pioneer in the space industry had launched a rocket from the island, one of the very first launches by a private industrial firm rather than a government agency. Dan had bought the old ranch when he first started Astro Manufacturing Corporation. He had bulldozed a three-mile-long landing strip and thrown up the hangars, test stands, and cinderblock office buildings that comprised Astro’s headquarters complex. The region’s environmentalists howled, but the local building inspector hesitantly okayed the buildings as tenable under the county’s hurricane safety code. The inspector departed from the Astro complex with a large bulge of cash in his pocket.

A hurricane—that’s all we need, Dan thought as he parked his forest green convertible in his personal space. He tried to keep the ten-year-old XJS in mint condition; before the spaceplane crash he had often tinkered with the auto himself. Not now, though. He walked briskly past the DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE sign that marked his slot, eager to get out of the hot, humid air. Hurricane season coming up, he reminded himself.

Inside the air-conditioned hangar Dan clanged up the steel stairway to his office on the catwalk that ran across three sides of the big open barnlike structure. The spaceplane’s wreckage was spread across the floor, one lonely technician squatting on his heels in the middle of it, looking puzzled. Dan thought about how much it cost to air-condition the whole hangar. The building wasn’t insulated, either, he knew: just bare metal walls frying in the sun. Be cheaper to keep just the offices under air. But as he looked down at that one technician Dan realized that cutting the air-conditioning bill wasn’t going to save Astro from bankruptcy.

He smiled at April as he passed her desk. She looked happier now that Vicki was gone. Dan closed his office door behind him and slid into the ultramodern leather swivel chair behind the heavy, ornately Victorian desk. His grandfather had given Dan the desk when he’d first started Astro Corporation. It had been the desk of his father, Dan’s great-grandfather, when he’d been a genteely impoverished young minister in rural Virginia. Dan had promised to use it as his very own. So now it dominated the cluttered office like a dark brooding castle looming over an untidy little hamlet.

Dan booted up his desktop computer and punched up his schedule for the remainder of the day. And frowned at the screen. One P.M.: Claude Passeau, Federal Aviation Administration. That’ll take the flavor out of lunch, he thought.

He’s coming here to close me down, Dan thought. What he didn’t know was how he might talk the man out of it.

It was precisely twelve minutes after one when Dan’s phone buzzed.

“Mr. Passeau to see you,” April announced. Dan thought again of how fortunate he was to have April as his executive assistant. The woman was smart, hard-working, and good-looking, to boot: tall and leggy, with skin the color of creamy milk chocolate and glossy shoulder-length dark hair. She ran his office, his social calendar; she could even program his computer with cool efficiency.

The memory of Vicki Lee’s accusation about an affair with Hannah flicked into his memory, annoying him all over again. If I was going to take an employee to bed it would be somebody like April, Dan said to himself. Not my top test pilot.

His office door opened and Claude Passeau stepped in. He was a small man, almost dainty, wearing a lightweight beige suit and a neat bow tie of blue and yellow stripes. Clip-on, Dan guessed. Passeau looked to be about forty, forty-five. Too young to be worried about his retirement benefits yet. He had a trim little moustache; his hairline was starting to recede, but his hair was still dark brown, although thinning.

Dan got to his feet and came around the desk, his hand extended. “Mr. Passeau.”

“Doctor Passeau, actually,” he said in a smooth voice that almost purred. He smiled pleasantly as he spoke.

Gesturing the man to the little round conference table in the corner of his office, Dan asked, “Doctor of engineering?”

Passeau brushed his moustache with a fingertip. “Psychology, I’m afraid. It was the only curriculum I could get in the school’s distance-learning program.”

“Oh. I see.” Dan started to ask which school he’d gone to, then thought better of it, realizing that Passeau had bought his doctorate from a diploma mill.

“The doctorate looks good on my resumé,” Passeau said as he sat at the chair Dan proffered. “The government doesn’t really care where it comes from or what subject it’s in. Just being able to claim a doctorate from a reasonably reputable school is enough to boost your salary category.”

Dan grinned as he sat next to him. Either this guy is charmingly honest or he’s a damned slippery customer, he thought.

April stepped into the office. “Can I get you gentlemen something? Coffee, maybe?”

“Thank you, I’ve had my lunch,” said Passeau.

“I’ll have coffee,” Dan said.

“In that case, so will I,” Passeau reconsidered.

As April shut the door behind her, Dan leaned slightly toward Passeau and said, “My people seem to be working well with your investigators. I think they’ll find the reason for the accident in a week or so.”

“More like a month or two, I’d say,” Passeau replied.

Dan said nothing, but grumbled to himself. More like six months, if I don’t light a fire under this bureaucrat.

Passeau asked, “Do you intend to build another spaceplane?”

“We’ve already got one nearly finished. It’s over in the next hangar, if you want to see it.”

“You realize, of course, that you will not be permitted to fly it until our investigation into the crash is concluded.”

Dan leaned back in his chair. “It could take a year to finish all the paperwork.”

“At the very least,” said Passeau.

“I was thinking that once you found the fault, we could fly the new bird without waiting for the paperwork to be finished.”

Passeau began to reply, but April came in with a lacquered tray bearing an insulated stainless steel jug of coffee and two delicate-looking china cups.

“I’ll pour,” Dan said, shooing her out of the office with the expression on his face.

Passeau said, “I know you’re anxious to get a successful flight, but the Federal Aviation Administration has rules, you realize, and those rules must be obeyed.”

And rain makes applesauce, Dan said to himself. Aloud, he asked, “Can’t we bend those rules a little?”

“And kill another pilot? What would that gain you?”