Skyfall

29

GET 16:41

“Baloney, salami or rat cheese, Mr. Flax, that's the lot. And you can have them on white or white.”

Flax glared at the tray of unappetizing looking sandwiches.

“Why is it, Charley,” he asked, “that the second a mission starts the commissary runs out of everything edible and starts sending us up this kind of drek? I suppose the bread's stale too?”

“You got it right, Mr. Flax. But, after all it's after seven at night, you can't expect…”

“I can't what? I can't expect decent food because it is after union hours or something? I got men here been working twenty-four hours without a break and the best you can come up with is horse-cock sandwiches?”

“Not me, I just bring “em. You want one?”

“Can beggars be choosers.” Flax grumbled, anger dissipated as fast as it had come, and he shifted his weight in the chair to ease his numb legs. He ought to walk around. After he ate something. “Give me one of each. Thanks.”

He threw away one slice of bread from each sandwich, and mashed the remainder together into a triple decker. It was almost edible. He chewed slowly on a big mouthful and listened to the instructions from the fission engine team in his earphones.

“… that's the one, painted yellow, to the right of the mounting. You're going to have to cut out a section of the pipe and crimpseal the lower end. Right…”

All of the time he was talking, eating, he was aware of that voice and of the two men in the vacuum of space trying to repair the atomic engines. Working always against the clock. At the thought his eyes went up to the GET readout, 16:43. It flipped over to 44 as he watched. Time was running out. A light blinked and he threw a switch.

“Russian desk here, Flax. I've been on the KY and Baikonur and they swear they have nothing operational that could rendezvous with Prometheus before the deadline. They have a Soyuz coming on line in about two days but they have no way of cutting this time by more than a few hours. This matches the info in our records and, if you will pardon my saying so, the CIA intelligence. I got through to them without asking you, I know I should.

“No, not this time. You were right, thanks. Then we're sure there's no chance of getting a Soviet rocket to rendezvous in time?”

“Absolutely. Sorry. A real zero.”

“Thanks anyway.” He threw the switch.

No help coming from the Soviets. And the NASA shuttle could not be rushed on line for a week at least, at utmost speed. They were doing that in any case, readying it as fast as they could. If Prometheus could get out of this orbit they still might need help. It was coming as fast as it could.

If only the Air Force had their shuttle on the line now. By hindsight he could have arranged it, as a backup measure. Spilt milk again; no point in kicking himself. It was all hush-hush and secret projects, but there was no way that secrets could be kept from other people in the same business. The shuttle payload, yes that was hush-hush enough, though everyone was guessing what they needed a twenty-ton capacity for. The military never stopped playing their expensive games. Bannerman had said that a shuttle wasn't on line now, and he was the one who should know. But he hadn't said just how long it would take to ready one. That was a thought. If it was only a day or two away it could be of help if Prometheus did get into a slightly better orbit. Ask Bannerman? No, no point in bothering the White House again; they were still in the cabinet meeting.

Should he call the Cape itself? As he thought this he groaned and reached for the black coffee, washing the last of the tasteless sandwich down with the cold coffee. A gourmet feast. No, he couldn't think of calling directly to a classified project. Maybe two years from now they would let him know what they were doing. Then what could he do? In through the side door. Who was working on this project that he knew well enough to phone, who might cut through some of the red tape? Among the military, no one, the engineers — of course! Ask the right question, get the right answer. Wolfgang Ern-sting. They had worked together countless hours before Wolfgang had opted for bigger money and secret research. One of the original Peenemunde team that Von Braun had brought. He grabbed up the phone. “I want to make a person-to-person call to Florida.”

A sudden summer storm lashed rain against the windows of the tiny cubicle, rivulets of water cutting streaks through the New York soot. Cooper, Science Editor of the Gazette-Times, looked at the rain but did not see it, was not aware of it. His mind was centered on turning hard fact and soft speculation into purple prose. He gave a last chomp on his ink-stained nails to drive the ideas into place, then began to peck feverishly with two fingers on the ancient Underwood standard.

“A greater disaster is in the making,” he wrote, “one that will make the tragedy of Cottenham New Town insignificant by comparison. The screaming death that hurtled out of the clear sky on that helpless city was just a single booster of the complex array of boosters, six in all, that lifted Prometheus into orbit where it now rests unstably, hurtling over our heads once every eighty-eight minutes. The boosters are toys compared to Prometheus for with its payload this vehicle weighs in excess of two thousand tons. A figure so large as to be meaningless — until we compare it to something we know. A US Navy destroyer. An entire destroyer is up there over our heads. The weight of all those guns, armor, engines, bombs, shells, munitions, all of that weight ready to fall. And fall it will — and bring down with it something far worse than sheer mass. Radioactive poisoning! For as fuel for Prometheus's motor there is carried five hundred pounds of uranium. When Prometheus hits the ground and explodes with the forces of a small nuclear bomb it will have a nuclear fallout for that poisonous radioactive metal will be turned to poisonous radioactive gas in an instant. Enough to kill two million people if it were dispersed finely enough. And where will this atomic bomb from outer space hit? It will strike…”

Where would the damn thing come down? Cooper thought. ie turned to a Mercator map of the world that he had spread jn the desk. On top of it was a transparent overlay sheet with the sine-wave shaped orbit drawn upon it. With each orbit the track changed as the Earth below revolved out from under the satellite. So… there… on the twenty-eighth orbit, when they had announced it would impact the atmosphere, it would be going… Christ!… right over the middle of the US!

Cooper shivered and looked out at the dark sky. The black birds of his predictions were coming home to roost. Far closer to his own head than he liked.

“We must face all the possibilities, Mr. President,” Dr. Schlochter said, nodding as he spoke. “There is a good chance that Prometheus may be destroyed---”

“I don't want to think about it. I get an ulcer when I do. Dragoni, another bourbon and step on it.”

“We must consider, I am afraid. Must consider the international aspects of another disaster. What this would do to our relations with the Soviet Union and with other nations.”

“Hey, do we consider the five in that thing and what we can do to help them?” Grodzinski asked. Dillwater nodded in the direction of the Secretary of Labor, a nod that was almost a slight bow of recognition. Grodzinski, for all of his gross and obvious faults, was at least thinking like a human being, about human beings.

“They are not our consideration,” Schlochter said, his nostrils flared slightly.

“I beg to differ with the Secretary of State,” Dillwater said. “I speak for NASA when I say the lives of those people are most valuable to us. It could not be different.”

“They're valuable, they're valuable,” Bandin said, ice rattling in his glass. “But that is not what we are talking about right this moment now. This is another consideration completely. What if they don't get that thing patched up? What if it does come down in twenty-six hours? Can we let it take out some American town like it did that Limey one? How are we going to stop that?”

“There is a way,” Bannerman said.

“A way to save this whole thing?” Bandin asked.

“I did not say that, Mr. President. I said there was a way to prevent Prometheus from falling and causing another disaster on Earth.”

“What's that?”

“If it could be destroyed in space — “

“Are you saying what I'm thinking, Bannerman?”

“I am, sir. We have defense rockets in silos and on the alert at all times to prevent a sudden nuclear surprise attack. These rockets are designed to intercept other rockets aimed at the United States and to destroy them. This would be a good test of the ability of the system.”

Simon Dillwater had to fight to keep the revulsion from his voice when he spoke. “Are you talking about deliberately destroying five human beings, General? Three of whom are American citizens?”

“I am.” Bannerman was calm, unmoved. “We take far greater losses in combat during a war and no one complains. By tomorrow morning ten times that number will be dead in auto accidents on our highways. It's not the number of lives that should be considered, nor the citizenship of the persons involved. Our only thought must be preventing a larger disaster that could be caused by the rocket striking the Earth.”

“Have you thought what would happen to the Prometheus program if this were done?” Dillwater asked.

“That is not a consideration at this moment,” Bannerman answered in his coldest drillfield voice. “If you'd done a better design job of building Prometheus we wouldn't be 'in this trouble right now.”

“You cannot say that….”

“That's enough!” Bandin shouted. “You people can fight later. Now we have a problem on our hands. General, get me an up-to-date report on the defense rockets. You know, are they ready to go and so on — and when is the latest moment they would have to have the command to fire to knock this thing down before it hits the US.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I'll have that in a few minutes.”

“How would it be done, I mean> what kind of warhead..?”

“Atomic. You'll excuse me if I use the phone.”

There was silence in the room. Grodzinski fumbled with his pencil on the table before him, looking shrunk. Dillwater was silent and erect but he could not keep the horror he felt from his face. Only Schlochter seemed unmoved.

“We must plan for the worst,” he said. “The complete loss of this mission in every way. If this occurs — what will the effect be on the Prometheus Project as a whole, Mr. Dill-water?”

“The project. . yes, of course. It will set us back a year at least, to replace the space station. You must realize that, after initiating construction of the generator, the vehicle with its atomic engines was to be used in high orbit as the last stage in the shuttle to ferry up the additional building materials. Without it we can't get the construction operating.”

“A year. You don't mean a year?” Bandin said, his face gray.

“I am afraid that's the minimum, sir.”

“Then that's the election,” Bandin said. “There'll be some corn-fed yokel sitting in this chair and you will all be out of a job as well. If you don't want that you are going to have to think of something pretty quick.”

“Unless they repair the atomic engine,” Bannerman said. “That's the only chance we have now. They must stick with that until it's done.”

“You bet your butt on that,” Bandin said. “How are they doing, Dillwater? What's the status, the latest?”

“No change, Mr. President. The pilot and Dr. Bron are outside the vehicle making the repairs as instructed by Mission Control. Things are going as planned.”

“How much longer?”

“I hesitate to say.

“Force yourself.”

“At a guess, and I really am guessing now, I would say that they could be finished inside another hour.”

“Let's hope they are.”

“We all pray that they are, Mr. President.”