The Tranquillity Alternative (38 page)

Oh, man
… For someone whom he had once suspected of being a turncoat, Cris sounded properly mortified.
Gene, we’ve got to stop them
…

Parnell laughed out loud. “How? We don’t even have a gun anymore … I lost mine during the blowout. You think we stand a chance?”

We can head back to the base
, she insisted.
There are mortar rockets stored in the garage, the ones they used for geological research. We can rig one up, fire it at the crater
…

“And probably miss,” he said. “Have you ever fired one? I never did.”

But we can figure out
…

“Maybe we could. But even if we managed to hit something, what would happen? If we’re lucky, we’d destroy their ship … and probably touch off a nuclear explosion. Do you want to be that close to a nuke when it blows? I don’t.”

Goddammit, Gene!
Ryer crawled forward to the short ladder leading to the pilot’s dome; there wasn’t enough room for both of them, so she futilely grabbed the right leg of his suit, shaking it to get his attention.
We can’t just let them get away with it!

Suddenly, Parnell felt very tired. He had been fighting this battle for more than half his life. Before, it had been the Russians; now, it was with North Koreans flying secondhand Russian spaceships. In ten or twenty years, if he lived long enough and cared anymore, it would be with the Iranians or the Libyans or God knew who else managed to get their hands on cast-off technology to fulfill some cheap political ambition.

Such are the battles younger men wage, when their blood is hot with ideology and their minds are filled with unbetrayed dreams. He was an old man now, though, and he was fed up with this bullshit.

We’ve got to do something!
Cris shouted.

In response, Parnell put his hand on the gearshift and shoved it forward, then released his foot from the brake pedal. Ryer was pitched back as the tractor lurched forward, crawling through the excavated pass and down the far side of the crater.

“Sure we can do something,” he said. “We can go home.”

Nine miles away,
Conestoga
was waiting for them, with enough fuel left in its tanks for the voyage back to the Wheel. He was alive. That must count for something.

“See ya ’round, Jay,” he whispered, not looking back at the bunker. “I hope it was worth it to you.”

The men in the bunker hadn’t heard anything from Ghost Rider since the Zenith touched down. Again and again, Lewitt hailed the North Korean vessel, only to be met with dead silence. He was beginning to harbor serious doubts when the voice of the Russian commander abruptly came over the comlink:

Blue Falcon, this is Ghost Rider. Come in, over.

“It’s about time,” Orvitz murmured as Lewitt let out his breath. He had long since given up on trying to restore the computers to operating status. The virus had totally infiltrated the mainframes, and even though it had been knocked out by a system reboot, it was then that he discovered that the missile c-cube system had been obliterated in the process. If there were backup files, they were located a quarter of a million miles away, in Crystal Palace’s computers.

Lewitt ignored the erstwhile Paul Dooley. “We copy, Ghost Rider. Nice landing. We were wondering about the LOS. Over.”

Behind him, he heard Uwe Aachener stand up from where he had been sitting at the bottom of the ladder. The German astronaut had found some stale candy bars in a food locker in the galley. They were the only food left behind, and undoubtedly several years old; that hadn’t prevented Aachener from attempting to eat them. He crumpled a paper wrapper and tossed it in the bloodstained corner of the firing room, where Rhodes’s and Bromleigh’s bodies had lain before he had removed them to the bunk compartment.

The Russian commander’s voice resumed.
I apologize for the delay, Mr. Lewitt, but we have encountered some
…
ah, difficulties up here.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lewitt replied.

It appears that some members of your landing party have managed to successfully escape
, Ghost Rider continued. We
saw their vehicle leaving the crater just a few minutes ago. Do you know anything about this? Over.

Lewitt smiled. Just as well; despite all that had happened, he bore no real animosity toward Gene or Cris. “I understand, Ghost Rider. There was nothing we could do to prevent it. We lost a member of our own team in trying to stop them.”

A brief pause.
I see. And you say that the bunker airlock has been voided, is that correct? And the top level?

“That’s right, Commander. We’re trapped on the lower levels.” Lewitt hesitated, feeling uneasy, not quite knowing why. “Of course, when you send one of your crew down here, he should be able to repressurize the airlock and Level 1A.”

Yes, that’s true.
Another pause, a little longer this time.
Even so, we yet have a small problem. Since you and your team members were expected to return aboard the
Conestoga
, we did not anticipate to supply
…
um, accommodations for three extra crew members.

Cecil Orvitz went dead white. “What the fuck is he … ?”

Lewitt furtively motioned for him to shut up. Ignoring him, Orvitz snatched up his own headset. “You son of a bitch, that was part of—!”

“Shut up!” Lewitt snapped. He hunched over the console, cradling the headset in his hands. “Look, Ghost Rider … Yuri … the deal with Wolff-Deiter was that …”

I am quite sorry
, Ghost Rider interrupted,
but the deal, as you say, has been changed. We shall require extra payload capacity to bring back some
…
ah, new baggage.

“You asshole!” Orvitz screamed. “You fucking bastard! Get us out of here!”

There was a long silence from the other end of the channel. After a few moments, the Zenith’s commanding officer spoke again.

I am truly sorry
, he said,
but further conversation is pointless. Perhaps you can convince the Americans to assist you. Ghost Rider over and out.

And then there was nothing but static.

Lewitt felt a warm presence next to him. Then a hand reached past his shoulder. Before he could react, Uwe Aachener snatched up the Colt from the desktop where Lewitt had placed it. When he looked up at him, Aachener’s face was impassive.

Orvitz’s mouth trembled. For the first time since they had met, the man who had pretended to be Paul Dooley was absolutely speechless.

Lewitt swallowed a hard, dry lump in his throat. He toggled the vox switch. “Ghost Rider, this is Blue Falcon. Please respond, over.”

Aachener studied the gun in his hand. Then he returned it to the desk and took a few steps back. He crossed his arms and stared at Lewitt.

“Ghost Rider, please come in.” Lewitt stared at the TV monitor. Two astronauts were stepping off the elevator; neither of them headed toward the camera. “Please come in, over.”

He waited. No reply. “This is Blue Falcon, please come in.”

The static on the comlink was broken once more, for only an instant, by a sound that resembled distant laughter, as if echoing across space from a remote galaxy.

And then they heard nothing else except their own voices, until the oxygen supply finally began to run out.

By then, they had settled the question of who would use the gun first.

From
The Washington Post;
February 23, 1995

Lunar Mission Survivors Safely Return,

Recount Sudden Death on the Moon

By Timothy S. Smith

Special Correspondent

SPACE STATION ONE—Three days after lifting off from Tranquillity Base, the U.S.S.
Conestoga
arrived in Earth orbit, bringing with it the two sole survivors of the American-German lunar expedition that came to a disastrous end when a freak electrical fire swept through the Teal Falcon military complex.

The two NASA astronauts, Com. Eugene M. Parnell and Capt. Cristine S. Ryer, were taken off the returning moonship in what space station doctors described as “stable and satisfactory condition.” They were hurried to the Wheel’s infirmary to receive treatment for extensive second-degree burns, minor sprains and contusions, prolonged effects of smoke inhalation, and acute exhaustion.

In a brief interview several hours after his arrival, commander Parnell told reporters of the blaze that swept through the underground bunker just as his team was preparing to launch six Minutemen II missiles.

“It was horrible,” he said, speaking from his bed in the station infirmary. “Everything seemed to go up at once. We were lucky to get out of there alive.”

Captain Ryer said, “There was no way we could get anyone else out. Gene and I were fortunate that we were able to make it to the airlock in time … it was terrifying, just awful.”

“I’m sorry that nobody else got out alive,” said Space Station One Commander Joseph K. Laughlin of the accident which killed five astronauts, as well as ATS television correspondents Berkley Rhodes and Alex Bromleigh. “It was a terrible tragedy … I’m just glad that two people managed to make it out, safe and sound.”

NASA spokesmen were unable to give an exact reason for the cause of the fire. They said that the leading theory is that old electrical cables within the twenty-six-year-old military installation may have decayed, causing a fatal short-circuit during activation of the launch-control systems that were supposed to fire the missiles last Sunday.

Until further investigation, however, the space agency is not willing to commit itself to any specific explanation….

2/22/95 • 1152 GMT

A
FTER HE HAD BEEN
interviewed by the reporters who had flown up from the Cape, the doctor ushered them out of the infirmary. Once they were gone, Parnell detached the cosmetic IV line that led beneath his bandaged right arm, pushed aside the sheets, and swung his legs over the side of the bed, demonstrating an ability to walk unassisted that ran contrary to the story that had been fed to the press.

“How much longer am I going to have to wear this stuff?” He rubbed his left hand over the bandages. “They itch like crazy.”

“Not too much longer,” Joe Laughlin said. He was standing at the back of the room, where he had silently watched the entire orchestrated affair. “When we fly you down to KSC tomorrow, you and Cris will be taken off the orbiter in stretchers. There’ll be camera crews, of course, but neither of you have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

“Is she talking to them now?” Parnell nodded toward the closed door of the intensive care unit.

“Yeah. She’s following the same script.” Old Joe smiled at his friend’s astonishment. “Don’t be so shocked. She’s got more to lose than you do, trying to pull that stunt with the virus program. This way at least she gets off clean … so long as she sticks to the official version.”

As the doctor—who really wasn’t a doctor, but the CIA case officer who had debriefed Parnell and Ryer after they brought
Conestoga
back to the Wheel—fetched a plastic cup of water from the sink, Laughlin put his left foot up on a chair and tied the laces of his sneakers. “She still hasn’t told us everything about that disk,” he went on. “We still don’t know why she was carrying it. Do you know anything about it?”

Parnell hesitated. He didn’t particularly want to squeal on Cris—she had saved his life, after all—but he knew that the boys from Langley would eventually get at the truth. Better they heard it from a reliable source; this way he could vouch for her and perhaps ease the repercussions.

“Yeah, she gave me the whole story on the way home,” Gene replied. “It contains a nasty little bug called Dr. Doolittle …”

“Because it talks to the animals?”

“Just a pun. Do little … get it?” Laughlin rolled his eyes and Parnell went on. “Anyway, she picked it up from some college kid at Florida State, a computer hacker she managed to track down somehow. The kid thought she was just a disgruntled employee from a local company who wanted to fuck up the in-house computer system, so he gave it to her. Your typical campus prank.”

“Yeah, right.” Old Joe shook his head. The CIA man, who had identified himself only as Mr. Taylor, stood quietly nearby, undoubtedly memorizing everything for his report. “Used to be that a college prank meant putting a bunch of pigs in the dean’s office.”

“Anyway,” Parnell went on, “she was planning to install it in the computers at Teal Falcon and the base just before we left. The idea was to screw things up so that when Koenig Selenen took possession of the base, they’d find that none of the computers were operational. No one could have proved she was responsible, if they even suspected her.”

Gene looked straight at Taylor. “It was supposed to be her revenge for getting dismissed from the Air Force. Nothing to do with … y’know, everything else that happened.” Taylor nodded his head in a neutral way, but said nothing. “It was fortunate that she had that disk,” Parnell asserted. “Otherwise …” He fell silent.

Laughlin coughed in his hand. “Anyway, to answer your question, you guys get to take off the bandages when you arrive at the Cape infirmary. As far as the media’s concerned, you’re going to be recovering from … uh …”

“Second-degree burns, multiple cuts and contusions, mild smoke inhalation, acute exhaustion,” Taylor said, handing the water he’d fetched to Parnell. “Don’t worry, Commander, we won’t keep you in the hospital for long. In two or three days we’ll let you go home. You’ll have recovered by then.”

Parnell drank the water in silence. In two or three days, Taylor’s colleagues at the Cape would have also learned everything they needed to know about what really happened in the bunker, and the “accidental fire” at Teal Falcon that had claimed the lives of most of the expedition would have faded to the back pages. When it came to rigging plausible cover stories, the CIA stood second to none.

He wondered what would happen to Cris. But he’d said and done everything that he could, at least for now.

“So until then, I stay here and play sick.” He shrugged and put the water aside. “Do you think I could at least have a real drink? Or am I too sick to be seen drinking whiskey?”