Coming in late the following afternoon, I tried cruising past the gate guard at idle, offering a conciliatory wave. He gave me a stolid nod and went back to his tablet. Someone new was shuffling luggage around in the parking lot. She had a briefcase on the ground and a bag slung over her shoulder. She wore jeans with short, brown leather lace-up boots, and an amber red, three quarter sleeve print blouse with a pearl necklace hanging out of it. Her long ivory-blonde hair was tied behind her head. The gentle lines of her face had an oriental tone. Dark eyes, deep set and knowing. She had a tiny nose and thin lips without lipstick. She was shorter than I had expected. My guess was five-feet-five. She stopped and stared as I got out.
“Erin, you made it!”
“The guard was very nice. He didn’t have my paperwork but he called around and had it brought out.”
“The guard was nice to you?”
“He was very nice. I haven’t checked in yet. I’ve just arrived. But, I have many questions. Is this a bad time?”
“The sooner the better. Let me take that briefcase.”
We made the obligatory stop in Julia’s office, paused at the door to the TCC and waved, got lustful stares, and escaped to my office. My new screen was blocking the view of the high-bay with a photo of the Pantheon at sunset. I fumbled around pushing buttons and finally got it to clear. We stood staring at the Griffin simulator, idle on its platform.
“So were you serious? Stellar drive engines?”
“We haven’t been able to see them. The real Griffin is at the Spacecraft Processing Facility on the KSC side. They won’t let us in yet.”
“How much sub light velocity do you need before they take over?”
“None. As I understand it, the Stellar Drives take you from sub light, up to light, and then through it all on their own.”
She gasped. “A single set of engines takes you directly to P-factors of light? There are no Amplight drives at all?”
“That’s what we’ve been doing in the sim.”
“What is the intake and what are the emissions?”
“We don’t know.”
“Who designed these?”
“Non-human engineers.”
“Oh, I see. Can I see the design specs?”
“We have all the sensor and control interface schematics, and all the interface circuitry. We have not been allowed anything on the engine cores.”
“What if one fails?”
“We are told they will not.”
“Gee… Will engine schematics be coming?”
“No. This is a special circumstance. A one-time undertaking. Much of it is classified, even from us. Our mission is to locate an artifact, retrieve it, and bring it back. The rough estimate is twelve months.”
“Just how fast can we go?”
“We don’t know yet. But we will.”
“How many people?”
“Seven or eight, but you’ll find the crew quarters quite extraordinary.”
“I see. So despite the blank spots, we stand to learn a whole bunch, don’t we?”
“We will be going farther and faster than anyone ever has. Is any of this a showstopper for you?”
“No way. I’ll bet I'll know a lot about those engines before we’re done.”
“I’m sure you will. Here’s your check-in tablet. It has most of what we know. Our TD is Terry Costerly. They’ve set up an office for you. Actually, you have your pick of three. Come on, I’ll take you there and you can pick one out and start getting settled in.”
We took the hallway to the adjoining offices where Erin stacked her belongings in the one nearest the habitat high-bay. I paused in the doorway as she began to open her pack.
“When you get set up, wander around and get your bearings, then go see Terry and he’ll work out a familiarization schedule with you. I’m still going over your file. I’ll probably have some questions when I’m done.”
“A mission with an advanced engine never before seen. I’m glad I took your call, Commander.”
“Me too, Erin.”
RJ was waiting in my office. His gray flight suit had a streak of grease on one shoulder.
“Escaped again, I see, or did they let you off the leash?”
“I saw you in the hall with an attractive blonde. Thought I should make sure she’s okay.”
“Erin Duan, our second propulsion expert.”
“Wow! Much nicer than the other one.”
“How is the other one doing?”
“As you would expect. Terry threw an O2 leak in the service crawlway at him. He went in and installed a pressure seal and fixed it, but then complained endlessly that it was too easy and a waste of his time.”
“How is Terry holding up to that crap?”
“Oh yeah. After the last barrage of complaints, Terry went back in and programmed the same failure in a decompressed service module and made old Paris do it in a pressurized spacesuit. Not so easy. It seemed to shut him up a bit. If he considered you to be important at all, he would already have been here to complain.”
“Well, I guess insignificance has its benefits, then.”
“Enjoy it while you can. It won’t last.”
As RJ spoke, my phone chimed. It was the KSC visitor's center personnel office. Someone by the name of Shelly Savoie had come to their office by mistake. Could we please send someone over because an escort would be required.
“RJ, want to take a ride?”
“Gladly; let us depart before Paris shows up to explain things to you.”
As we left the parking lot, I coasted cautiously by the gate guard. This time he did not even look up. We looped around to the CCAFS entrance, held up our badges, and picked up speed on Phillips Parkway
“Hey, let’s take the back route that goes by the lighthouse.”
“Great. I’d love to see the old lighthouse again. Now that’s what technology should be.”
We turned down Pier Road and watched the beach come up on our right. Past the old Delta launch pads, the security exercise yard and shooting range, we came up on Pad 46. I slowed, stopped, and pointed at a crumbling structure on our right.
“See that big cement ramp coming out of that broken down building pointing toward the ocean?”
“Yeah, what’s left of it.”
“Way back in the fifties, before guidance was developed, they used to launch a vehicle off that ramp called a Snark. Most of them crashed and sunk in the ocean. I hear some old timers say that this part of the beach is still called Snark infested waters.”
RJ laughed and stared as though he was trying to imagine one coming off the ramp.
“On the left, just past those trees is a runway most people have never heard of even though it’s still used all the time. Everybody thinks the shuttle runway is the only one. This one’s called the skid-strip, because way back when it was built an awful lot of experimental didn’t actually land here, it skidded in.”
“They still use it?”
“Oh yeah. There’s a control tower. It’s used quite a bit for touch and gos. And, you see this fence and gate straight ahead of us?”
“It’s abandoned.”
“It is now. Way, way back they used to have a blimp here called Fat Albert. It was used for security radar coverage before radar improved. The thing was nearly the size of the Goodyear blimp and it was anchored by a special tether even though it had its own radio controlled steering and motors. The story is that there was one just like it used down in the Florida Keys. Supposedly, during a storm, the one in the Keys broke loose from its mooring and drifted out over the Atlantic. As the temperature cooled, it came down until it was dragging the tether across the water. Before the agency could get a handle on it, a guy in a small fishing boat came along and thought he had found himself a free blimp. He tied the tether off to his boat and decided he’d tow it back home. Problem was, as soon as he got going, the forward motion produced a whole lot of lift and up went the blimp, the boat, and the guy. The guy grabbed his life preserver and jumped, and the blim
p flew away with a boat hanging off it. Neither the agency nor the military could figure out how to bring the thing back safely, so they dispatched a fighter jet and shot it down. That night, the ground crew snuck into the hanger and painted a blimp symbol on the side of the fighter to show it had bagged one blimp. That’s how I got the story. The fighter is in an air museum and still has the blimp silhouette on the side of it.”
“Now that, my friend, is a good story.”
We made our way through the industrial area and headed west over the river. The NASA causeway was alive with traffic and people. We scanned the distant facilities, soaking up the history that surrounded us, passing the launch areas where long, long ago, the first space shuttles had jumped off their pads to construct the first real space station, the circling harbor that had given us a foothold to build bigger, better islands in orbit. Huge domes now covered those areas, but the sentiments from time were still glowing all around us. In the distance, the VAB still commanded the skyline, and the viewing stands stood waiting for the next big event.
Shelly Savoie was sitting on the steps of the HR office. The burn on her face was more apparent than I expected. We introduced ourselves, got her a temporary badge from the office, and watched as she threw her leg over a humongous cherry-red, abundantly chromed Harley Davidson and cranked it to life.
“My kind of woman,” remarked RJ.
Chapter 12