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Authors: Ben Bova

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BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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T
hey’re all in their places with long morose faces, Dan I thought as he gaveled the board meeting to order.
Astro Manufacturing Corporation’s board of directors consisted of eight people, five men and three women, plus Dan, who served as chairman as well as the company’s CEO. Board politics were delicate: Dan owned the majority of the company’s stock, by far, but if all eight of the other board members voted together, they could outvote him. When the company had started, slightly more than five years earlier, Dan had easily gained his way. But as the costs of building the power satellite escalated and profits seemed more elusive with each meeting, running the board became more and more difficult.
This was the first meeting since the spaceplane crash. Dan knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
They met in the larger of the Astro Motel’s two conference
rooms. Despite their grumbling about having to travel all the way out to Matagorda Island, every member of the board was in their seat along the conference table. A bad sign, Dan thought.
Sitting off by the wall, Asim al-Bashir was watching them with a bemused little smile on his bearded face. On the other side of the room, April sat slightly behind Dan with a palmsized gray digital recorder on her lap.
Standing at the head of the table, all eyes on him, Dan said, “Before we begin the meeting, I’d like to introduce my guest, Mr. Asim al-Bashir. I asked him here to meet you this morning because he represents Tricontinental Oil Corporation, and he has a proposal to make to us.”
A few of the board members nodded knowingly. The others glanced puzzledly at al-Bashir. Several members whispered to one another.
Dan tapped the tabletop with his pen and the buzzing stopped. “It’s show time,” he joked mildly.
They dispensed, as always, with the reading of the last meeting’s minutes. Then they moved to delay the usual renports until after a discussion of the company’s current situation. Dan was grateful that they weren’t in a rush to hear the comptroller’s report.
Looking down the table at their faces, Dan thought they were steeling themselves for the bad news. Gray-haired, every one of them, except for the bald men. Two representatives of venture capital companies, four directors of university trust funds, a retired executive from the electronics industry and a friend of Dan’s late father, who still treated Dan like a teenager on a toot Not the sharpest bunch of pencils in the box, Dan thought. But their money does their thinking for them.
“All right,” he said. “Here’s the company’s situation in a nutshell:
“The power satellite is ninety-nine percent completed. We could be generating electrical power from it in a month or less, if we could just finish the last final touches. But the crash of the spaceplane has stopped our operations cold. The
government will not allow us to fly the backup until the cause of the crash is determined.”
“Meanwhile,” said one of the venture capital men, “you’re bleeding to death.”
“Very vividly put,” said Dan, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
One of the women, a university trust fund executive, asked, “How long will operations be suspended?”
Dan spread his hands. “There’s no way of telling. Several months, at least.”
“It’s already been a couple of months since the crash,” said one of the older men.
“These investigations take time,” the woman beside him said.
“And while they’re taking their time, we’re bleeding to death, as Robert said.”
“There are some bright spots in the picture,” Dan pointed out. “We do have a nearly complete power satellite in orbit, and it’s been successfully boosted to its permanent position in geosynchronous orbit.”
“But you’re not able to send any workmen to it to complete the job.”
“For the moment, that’s true. But that powersat gives us a very attractive incentive for new potential investors.”
“Such as your old friend Yamagata?”
Ignoring the dig, Dan said, “Senator Thornton of Oklahoma has introduced a bill that could help us to raise funding from the private money market.”
“But first you have to get the damned bill through the damned Congress,” fumed one of the members.
“That’s true,” Dan admitted. “There are other possibilities, though. That’s why I invited Mr. al-Bashir to our meeting.”
They all turned to al-Bashir. Dan said, “He has a proposal for us to consider.”
Al-Bashir got up from his seat and stepped to the head of the table. Standing beside Dan, he said, “The proposal is very simple. Tricontinental Oil is prepared to buy fifteen
percent of the Astro shares now held by Mr. Randolph for a price of one point five billion American dollars.”
That stunned them. Dan saw the surprise on their faces and realized that no one was saying a word.
At last one of the university people spoke up: “Will Tricontinental be willing to buy anyone else’s shares at the same rate?”
Glancing down at Dan, al-Bashir said, “Not at the present time. But there is always a possibility in the future.”
That’s it, Dan thought. That’s how Garrison will take control of my company. The others will rush to dump their shares. If I sell to him I’ll be slitting my own double-damned throat.
P
asseau was smiling, but Dan could see something else in his eyes. Resentment? Anger? Or was it something more subtle: curiosity, maybe. The man sat there in front of Dan’s desk, with his floppy bow tie and his little moustache, and he smiled like a cat with a cornered canary.
“You intend to fly the spaceplane?” the FAA investigator asked, his voice a mild purr. “And how will you obtain permission for that?”
“I’ve already got an FAA license to launch,” Dan said, leaning back in his desk chair. “It’s still valid.” He imagined himself playing poker in the Old West with a slick cardshark who held all the aces in his hands. I’ve got to bluff my way through this, Dan told himself.
“May I point out that a single phone call from me to Washington could revoke any launch permit that you have,” said Passeau.
“We’ll be launching out over the water, Claude. The booster won’t be in American airspace.”
With a little nod, Passeau said, “Not for more than a few minutes, I grant you. But still—”
“The spaceplane separates from the booster at an altitude that’s miles above controlled airspace. You know that.”
Passeau said nothing.
“And the booster breaks up and falls into the Atlantic. Again, way outside of U.S. airspace.”
“But the spaceplane must return to Earth. It can’t stay in orbit forever. It must land, and for that it must fly through American airspace.”
Dan hesitated only for the span of a heartbeat. “If it lands in the U.S.”
Passeau’s brows hiked up. That got him! Dan said to himself.
“You’d land it outside American territory?”
“Out of the FAA’s jurisdiction,” Dan said.
Sinking back in his chair, Passeau clasped his hands together as if in prayer and raised them to his lips, thinking hard.
“I suppose you realize that if I allow you to get away with this, my career in the Federal Aviation Administration is absolutely ruined.”
Dan had expected that. Very evenly, he replied, “That’s why I think you should take some vacation time, Claude. You’ve been working awfully hard on this investigation. A week or so at a top-flight hotel on the Riviera would do you a lot of good.”
Sighing, Passeau said, “Yes, a vacation would be wonderful. If I could afford it. On my salary, the best I could hope for is a Holiday Inn off the beach in Florida.”
“I have an uncle,” Dan said, straight-faced, “who’s taken a suite at the Hotel Beaulieu, halfway between Nice and Monte Carlo.”
“Indeed.”
“Trouble is, he won’t be able to get there. Arthritis or some kind of ailment. He’s pretty old, you know.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Well, the suite’s paid for and you know the French—they won’t refund his money.”
Passeau tried to look severe. “Dan, are you attempting to bribe me?”
Dropping the pretense, Dan answered, “I’m trying to save your career, Claude.”
“And your company.”
“That, too.”
“You and your uncles.” But Passeau was smiling now.
“I’ve got a lot of uncles. None of them are named Randolph and all of them have their own credit cards that can’t be traced back to me.”
Shaking his head, Passeau said, “You’re a scoundrel, Dan!” “Just a businessman trying to survive.”
Passeau was smiling now. “It would be wonderful, a week on the Riviera. But it would end with the two of us going to jail.”
“Not if we time it right.” Dan leaned forward across his desk. “You take a week off. By the time you get back we’ve run the test flight. You express great outrage that I sneaked it in behind your back. Nobody else knows about it except you and me.”
Passeau stared at Dan. He’s tempted, Dan thought It all depends on how much he really wants to help me. He’ll be taking a risk, but it’s a pretty small one. I’ll be betting the farm, the family jewels, and my cojones on the test flight.
“No one else will know about it?” Passeau asked, in a silky whisper.
“No one,” said Dan. He realized that April had already made the hotel reservation, but he was confident he could trust his executive assistant.
“And how will you be able to tow your rocket out onto the launchpad and place the spaceplane atop it without anyone noticing?”
“Mating test,” Dan replied innocently. “As far as the government is concerned, and the news media, we’ll just be testing the connectors between the booster and the spaceplane.
Alignment, electrical connections, systems compatibility, that sort of thing.”
Passeau said nothing.
“The booster’s solid-fueled. We won’t need to fill her tanks and go through all that long a countdown. The plane will be crewless, nobody aboard.”
A cloud of suspicion crossed Passeau’s face. “You promise that? Nobody aboard?”
“I swear it,” Dan said.
For long moments Passeau remained silent, obviously thinking, weighing his options, all the possibilities.
“This could destroy me,” he said at last.
“I’ll hire you if the FAA throws you out.”
“We could both go to jail.”
“You’ll do it?”
Passeau hesitated another few moments, then murmured, “I’ve never been to the Riviera.”
“You’ll love it!”
“If this doesn’t go well, I may have to stay there and ask the French for political asylum.”
If this doesn’t go well, Dan thought, there’s no place on Earth that I can run to.
T
he Sun was dipping below the scrub pines as April Simmonds parked her baby blue Sebring next to the empty handicapped space and headed for the motel’s bar entrance. No sense locking a convertible, she had learned. If anybody wants it badly enough they’ll slash the top open. Besides, nobody around here would bother her car. All the Astro people knew it was hers, and none of them were car thieves.
Pushing through the door brought her into the frigid air-conditioning of the bar. It’s cold enough in here to raise goosebumps, she complained silently. Then she remembered reading somewhere that they kept topless bars real cold so that the dancers’ nipples would be stiff.
It had been a long day at the office, with Dan in a sweat to get a booster set up on the launchpad so that they could mate the backup spaceplane to it. Most of the FAA people had left, though, and a crew of technicians had started gathering up the pieces of the first spaceplane’s wreckage to store in precisely marked cartons that eventually would be stacked in a warehouse.
The lounge was jammed with after-work people, most of them crowded around the bar three deep, men outnumbering women at least two to one. Country music was thumping from the speakers in the ceiling but the conversations and laughter and calls to the barmaids for drinks were so loud she could barely make out the song: “Lay Your Head on My Shoulder,” a classic. Dr. Tenny had always called it the transplant song.
Thinking of Joe reminded her why she was here. April wanted to talk to the barmaids, find out what they remembered about Pete Larsen, if anything. She herself had come to this bar with Pete once, on one of her dates with the man. Pete had shown more interest in the computer game console off in the corner than he had in her.
April hesitated just inside the doorway. The thought of worming through the crowd to the bar discouraged her, and she’d never get to talk to the barmaids anyway; they were too busy.
“Hey, April, what’re you drinking?”
It was one of the technicians. April recognized his face but couldn’t quite place his name.
“White wine?” she said, falling back into the slightly defensive mode of speech that she had inherited from her native Virginia.
The guy dove into the crowd and reappeared a minute
later with a glass of wine in one hand and a tumbler of something stronger in the other.
“Haven’t seen you around here for a while,” he said, guiding her toward an unoccupied booth with a big grin on his face.
She accepted the wine and his hand on the small of her back. “It’s been terribly busy.”
“Yeah, the crash and then Tenny getting killed. Most of the people in my group are wondering how long we’ve got before Randolph lays us off.”
“He’s fighting awfully hard to avoid that,” April said, sliding into the booth, resigning herself to the fact that her attempt at detective work was going to result in nothing more than listening to this man’s troubles and finding an excuse to get away without hurting his feelings.
Across the crowded, noisy room, though, another Astro employee watched April chatting with the technician. He was a data manager in Astro’s personnel department, and he knew that Dan Randolph’s executive assistant had been reviewing personnel records for the past several days. She had scanned Pete Larsen’s file several times. He had a buddy in Houston who paid good money to be informed about what Randolph was up to. He decided to call his buddy, who worked at Tricontinental Oil, and let him know what April Simmonds was doing. The rumor was that Tricontinental was going to buy Astro out. A lot of money is going to change hands, he thought. I might as well get some of it for myself.
 
 
B
y the time Claude Passeau entered the bar, the after-work crowd had dissipated. April was long gone, driving alone to catch the last ferry of the evening. The technician who’d bought her a drink drove his own car into the ferry and even followed April partway to her apartment in Lamar, but lost his nerve halfway there and turned back to his own place, a house he shared with three other Astro employees.
A soft instrumental was purring from the music system, a
blessed relief from the usual doleful nasalities that the bar’s clientele seemed to enjoy. Passeau grimaced at the thought of trying to pick a decent wine from the selection stocked at the bar. Instead be ordered a brandy, longing for a sip of Armagnac but settling for the Presidente that Dan had recommended.
Sitting alone in the same booth that April had occupied, he wrestled with his conscience.
Dan wants to launch his spaceplane, to prove that the crash was sabotage. I can’t be a party to that; it would ruin my career. So Dan cleverly offers me a free vacation on the Riviera.
The nerve of the man! Despite himself, Passeau smiled at the thought of it. Out-and-out bribery. We’d both go to jail.
And yet—Passeau admired Dan’s drive, his daring, his willingness to risk everything. And, at heart, Passeau agreed that the first spaceplane’s crash was no accident. Someone very cleverly sabotaged the plane. Someone with deep technical capabilities and enormous resources. Someone extremely dangerous. If only there were a shred of evidence to show!
A young woman entered the bar. The few men still perched on stools swiveled their heads to check her out. Pert, thought Passeau. That’s the kind of woman that defined the word. She was slim, cute, a sprinkling of freckles across her snub nose, strawberry blonde hair cut short. She wore a T-shirt with some sort of slogan across the chest and a pair of ragged cutoffs. Good legs, not much bosom.
She spotted Passeau and walked straight to his booth. Surprised and more than a little flattered, Passeau got to his feet as she approached.
“Mr. Passeau? I’m Kelly Eamons.”
Passeau’s welcoming smile faltered. “From the FBI office?” he asked, knowing it was a foolish question.
She sat across the table from him and lowered her voice slightly. “Special Agent Kelly Eamons,” she elaborated, with a nod. “I work with Special Agent Chavez.”
Trying to recover his aplomb, Passeau said, “You seem much too young to be an FBI agent.”
She smiled, showing perfectly straight white teeth. “Looks can be deceiving, Mr. Passeau.”
He recommended a Presidente for her. Instead she ordered a cherry Coke. Texas girl, Passeau realized.
Once the cola arrived, Eamons ignored it. “I need to get your straight-up opinion on what Dan Randolph’s told us.”
“About the crash.”
“And about the death of his chief engineer, Joseph Tenny.”
Passeau nodded.
“Well? What’s your take on it?”
He shook his head. How much of my career has depended on going along with the system, keeping quiet, staying out of the limelight? Twenty years of patient servitude, and what has it got me? A wife who has left me; two children who won’t even speak to me. A mortgage on a house I’m not allowed to enter. In five years I could take early retirement. Five years more.
Eamons leaned toward him, totally unaware of Passeau’s inner turmoil.
“I really need to know,” she said earnestly. “Even if you only—”
“I believe the spaceplane was sabotaged,” Passeau heard himself say, slightly surprised at his own words. “I have no evidence that clearly shows it, but that is my belief.”
Eamons sank back on the booth’s bench. She was no longer smiling. “I see,” she said. “Then that means there’s a chance that Tenny was murdered.”
“And
that
means that Astro Corporation had a spy, a saboteur, in its midst.”
“Had?”
“The man Larsen. The one who committed suicide.”
Eamons nodded, understanding. “Maybe that’s where I should start. With him.”
They talked until the barmaid came over and unceremoniously announced, “Last call. We close in fifteen minutes.”
Eamons got up and left, her original cherry Coke still untouched on the booth’s varnished table. Passeau gulped down the brandy that had been sitting before him since the FBI agent had arrived, then he rose, too, and headed for the door.
As he stepped out into the dank, humid, hot night, alive
with the buzz of insects and distant groaning calls of lovesick frogs, Passeau finally made up his mind.
I will not go to the Riviera. That would be too obvious. I’ll take a vacation week and return to New Orleans. Perhaps my children will consent to let me see them. By the time I return to Matagorda, Dan’s test flight will be a fait accompli.
Back in the Astro Motel bar, the barmaid took the untouched Coke and delicate brandy glass back to the sink, thinking, A couple of big boozers they were. And he’s a lousy tipper, too.
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