The Space Center is divided into two halves, the Manned Operations side, and the Eastern Range side. Manned Operations takes up part of the beach and a big section of inland. It’s where that behemoth known as the space shuttle used to jump off and to this day, many people still call it the Shuttle side of the Cape. The Eastern Range occupies one side of Port Canaveral and its own big section of beach. It’s always been considered a testing ground, and in keeping to that sentiment, an awful lot of vehicles never left the pad and even more came flaming down ahead of schedule.
Genesis is a very old facility located near the south gate of the Eastern Range dating way back to when it was called the Eastern Test Range, but some silly admiral decided the word “test” was too scary for the local residents so it was abbreviated down to the Eastern Range instead. The natives of Cape Canaveral have seen errant rocket motors splash down in their river, had a B-27 crash on the beach, heard numerous booms coming from the Center when there should not have been, and endured countless expensive fire works in the sky overhead from boosters that had developed minds of their own and were interrupted by the quick destruct trigger at Range Control. Good thing they took that word “test” out of the name so people won’t be worried.
The facility called Genesis was built in an era that is beyond my imagination. It was from a time when vacuum tubes and hand soldered circuit boards put men into space. Today’s strangely dominant language called software did not exist at the time, but man was headed for the moon so it needed to. Its time had come. There were plenty of zeros and ones hanging around, so why not organize them into a language for machines? That was the purpose of Genesis; create the first space system software. Invent a new way to talk to machines. Like everything else done during the Mercury and Apollo era, they did that and did it exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that today some of us wonder if someday a HAL 9000 or a Skynet computer system may elect to overrule us all and we’ll change places with the machines.
Genesis has served a wide range of purposes since software conception was realized. It has been an administrative think-tank, a records facility, and eventually a solar energy research center for the University of Central Florida, until some of the ship captains coming into Port Canaveral complained that the solar panels were blinding them with reflected sunlight. It continued to support various research projects until private sector space made it too valuable to be anything but spacecraft orientated.
You do not need a badge to get into Genesis. You hang a right turn just before the south gate, as though you’re turning into the old Trident Basin, then a quick left and the fenced area to Genesis sits wide open.
On this day, another surprise awaited me. As I pulled into the Genesis gate, a new portable guard shack had been set up. A security officer emerged and stopped me. I dug in the center console, rolled down the passenger’s window, and handed him my Space Center badge. He returned to his shack and began typing at a computer screen.
You can always run the gates at the Space Center and make it. You just don’t make it far. The system has been tested countless times by angry spouses, would-be assassins, illegal immigrants, protestors of every cause, drunken drivers, impatient tourists, and persons of questionable mental stability. All of these found their way to the back of a security vehicle before being taken to headquarters. Even the right CAT scan will set off a radiation alert. If you spend any time inside the Center, you cannot miss the five hundred foot parachute jumps by men with guns, or the assortment of spent shells around your facility after a weekend of security drills, or the camouflaged, machine gun wielding special forces coming out of the snake and alligator infested woodlands when an intruder has been detected by infrared from a helicopter overhead. If any of these people ever yell “halt” to me, I won’t need to think it over.
The guard returned to the passenger’s window, a tablet and badge in hand. “All your documentation is already processed Mr. Tarn. I just need a signature there at the bottom.”
I scribbled an electronic signature and traded it for the badge. “Have a good day, Sir.”
“Thanks.”
With nine or ten gray metallic buildings to choose from, I headed for the one with the five-story hanger door. The main entrance opened to a security room and another guard. He looked up from his podium and stood. “It’s a badge exchange. I’ll need yours,” he said and reached out one hand. He looked at the coding on my new badge, deposited it in a numbered slot and handed me a smaller red badge with that number on it. Without speaking, he keyed in a code on a pad by the door and let me through.
There was a hallway created by stand-up blue dividers on the left that separated a break room area with a scraped-up tan wall on the right. The air conditioning was almost too cool. Halfway down the makeshift corridor, another hallway on the right led to what looked like office areas. Straight ahead was a large double door to a high-bay. It had its own keypad lock. There was a big red buzzer button next to it for those not privileged enough for the key code. It was my intention to push that button, but I was cut off when an attractive middle-aged woman sped around the corner and partially crashed into me. She pulled up startled and stepped back with a half displeased, half questioning stare. Her voice suggested tempered impatience. “Who are you? Can I help you?”
“Adrian Tarn, and you?”
“Oh! Oh, Commander, we’ve been expecting you, but they couldn’t give us any timeline. I’m pleased to finally meet you. I’m Julia Zeller, Resident Director. Have you been in the high-bay yet? Have you seen it?”
Julia was disciplined and self-assured. She had that air of being unquestionably in charge. She was slightly tall, dark hair bundled up behind her head, low eyebrows turned up at the end giving that narrow-eyed, bedroom-dare stare, rosy cheeks and puffy red lips. She wore a dark, printed, silk twill wrap that left an open V that was almost too revealing. An unbuttoned black long sleeve cardigan was draped over it. I had the feeling I would not want to debate Julia or be on her wrong side.
“Just got here.”
“Oh good. I’ll get to take you in myself. I’ve never seen a project advance this quickly. It’s quite amazing.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Julia.” I held out a hand and she responded with a deceptively timid, reluctant handshake. “How long have you been director?”
She turned and headed for the high-bay doors. Our footsteps echoed down the hallway. “It’s usually a five-year stint. Part of the learn-everything tour. I’ve been overseeing the facility for about two years. Your mission has somewhat thrown us for a loop. It kind of fell out of the sky, if you don’t mind the play on words. Our high-bay hasn’t been used much. The last program was drop tests of an inter-stage. I’ve never seen so much equipment transferred so quickly. There must be some high level urgency driving this. Care to fill me in on any of that?”
“What have you got so far?”
“They brought in a pneumatic support structure from the old Constellation program. It was unused, but old. They completely refurbished and adapted it for the new spacecraft mockup. The simulator itself is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s bigger and more complete. It’s futuristic-looking. Any idea where it was developed?”
“Can I fly it yet?”
“You could on a very limited basis, but that would rob us of three days of twenty-four hour processing to get the thing completely ready for testing.”
“Let’s not do that, then. I’ll wait.”
“Commander Tarn, you’re evading my questions with the skill of a politician.”
“Julia, there’s no reason to insult me.”
She stopped and laughed. “Oh, for the days of the dumb jet-jockeys. Is there nothing at all you can tell me about all this?”
“I’m going to be spending a lot of time here repeatedly crashing your new simulator, so you probably should start calling me Adrian. Can I see it?”
She offered a conciliatory smile and held one hand up. “This way.” She led me past the break room to the heavy metal d
oors. After a quick look around she said, “Yours is 8376.” She tapped it in, waited for the clicks, and pulled the door open.
The massive steel high-bay looked like a clean room, though it was not. Gray acoustic door-size panels lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Big high-pressure sodium lights hung fifty feet overhead. A yellow gantry crane was parked at the far end of the building. The reinforced white tile floor looked like you could eat off it. The place was busy. Half a dozen technicians in white coveralls and hairnets were coming and going, their choreography managed by two or three engineers in white lab smocks. Periodically, some of them were pausing to stare at us.
The item in the middle of the bay was so profound it mesmerized me. Julia picked up on my stun. “Yeah, the platform was ready when they brought the simulator in. It came by barge. They offloaded up by the industrial area onto a kneel-down transporter. I had no idea what to expect. They used a huge, special transfer container. We opened the bay doors and the thing was completely covered in foil. After they raised it on the air pallets, they rolled it forward and let the nose tear through the foil. You remember that very old movie with Charlton Heston where he crashes his spacecraft into a lake? When I first saw the front end I though it was the prop from that movie. That front end is almost identical except bigger.”
It was an excellent description of the portion of the Griffin that now sat atop the motion platform. The front end looked like a white, three-blade broad head arrow tip. It could have been a spearhead. The nose came to such a distinct point; it really did look like a weapon. There was something unusual about the surface coating. It was not standard. It looked like a white, metallic substance had somehow been bonded to the craft. The side blades that began near the nose swept back to become the retracted wings. I instinctively looked for the red labels that usually said ‘no step’ on them but did not find any. Blue-tinted windshields were fit into the top and bottom half of the front end forming almost a cupola of vision. These were three way windows; transparency, video display, or heads up display data. External, retractable blast shields were available around them.
The vehicle was much larger than expected, the body wider than tall. A repulse drive dome was attached to the bottom mid section. Behind that, the simulator was cut off. No reproduction of the habitat module or power plants.
Julia said, “You see the guy in the gray suit and tie with his head in the back of that console against the wall behind the simulator, the only guy not wearing standard issue high-bay gear?”
The man backed out of the console, said something to a technician helping him, and looked over at us. Julia waved him over. “He’s your Test Director, Terry Costerly. He came in about a week ago. He’s sharp.”
Costerly approached us with eyebrows raised. He stuck his hand out and spoke as we shook. “Terry Costerly.”
“Adrian Tarn.”
“Oh, I see. What do you think?” He waved a hand across the high-bay.
“My kind of toys.”
He stifled a laugh, thought about being offended, and then smiled and said, “Yeah, me too.”
Julia’s cell interrupted. “Zeller… No, no, no, that’s not what was promised. I have the invoice on my desk. Give me a minute to get there.” The fierce-look returned to her face. She nodded at me and said, “I’ll have to turn you over to your drill instructor here, Adrian. Come see me in my office when you get a chance so I can ask some more questions you won’t answer.” She ducked her head back to the phone and headed off.
Costerly appraised me out of the corner of his eye.
“Can I get a look at the flight deck?”
“It’s sealed for pressure testing at the moment. They’ll be through in about forty-five minutes. Why don’t I show you your office first?”
“Pressure testing? There’s a real environmental control system in the thing?”
“Yes, and if I program in a life support failure and any of you hot shots fail to recognize and correct it, I will let you pass out before I flood the cabin.”
“Wow! I’m impressed”
He led me to a hallway on the north side of the hanger. My office was the first door on the right. It opened to quite a large open room. Desk in the middle stacked so high with logbooks and systems manuals it was intimidating. Big picture window in front of the desk looking out over the high-bay. Comfortable brown-leather chairs all around. A long wood-grained chart table against one wall with diagrams and flow charts pinned to the wall on a large bulletin board.
“I’ve been using your office because of all the books. Mine are still arriving piece by piece. Haven’t seen this much paper in a long time. It’s because of when the Griffin and the motion platform were designed. Paper was still in use quite a bit back then.”
He stood at the high-bay observation window staring out at the Griffin mockup. “You realize of course that it’s a full flight simulator. Actually, it’s a lot more than an FFS, really. The DOF is beyond the six degrees-of-freedom motion that we’re accustomed to in most simulators. It was a standard Stewart platform hexapod, but they’ve pushed it way beyond that. The thing will go completely vertical in either direction, and the acceleration onset cueing is much deeper than normal. You will think you’re diving, and there will be nothing you can do to make your mind not believe that.”
I took a seat at the desk and tested the chair. “I thought you were a launch director. How do you know so much about simulator platforms?”
“My studies were in aeronautical science even though most of my applied is unmanned aerospace. I wanted it that way. The unmanned payloads don’t mind fifteen or twenty G’s, so why waste gravity repulse systems on them? That’s the only reason we still send payloads up with liquids and solids these days. The atmosphere in the Launch Control Centers is quite a bit more intense for those.”
I swiveled my chair back and forth. “So have you ever lost one?”
He looked at me as though it was almost too personal a question. “Why? Are you worried?”
“Not at all.”
“We had a small assist motor attached to the side of a Delta Triple X burn through once. There was a metallurgical flaw in the motor casing that somehow didn’t get picked up. The vehicle got just above the trees when the burn-through set off the main propellant. The thing was still full of fuel. It went off like a bomb. The blast radius was about a mile. It set fire to a couple dozen cars in the parking lot. They locked down our launch room because we were too close, but we started getting smoke in the ventilation system. We had to use the masks in the emergency storage locker. It was the first time that had ever happened. They kept us in the damn launch room for twelve hours while the fires got put out and the orange cloud headed out to sea. Other than that, all my projects have been smooth or correctable.”
“Somebody must really love you to bring you in on this one. Why’d you take it?”
“There were some old debts brought into play, but the truth is I would’ve signed on anyway. I don’t have all the data yet but there’s something happening here. Those engines? I haven’t heard of any development phases for those. The spec sheets tell you everything they’ll do but not how they do it. And where did this vehicle come from? I’d like to know that. My curiosity got the best of me, and that’s okay as long as none of this clandestine stuff affects my work. Is there anything you can add to what I already know?”
“That seems to be the question of the day.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. I’m getting new flight data requirements in, pretty much by the hour. I’ve got a pretty good picture. About forty-five minutes ago, they started sending me mandates for the first and only test flight. That’s damn interesting. Have you seen it?”
“To be honest, everybody seems to know more than me.”
“Did you know you’re headed for the G1.9 brown dwarf, our sun’s companion star? That’s just to certify the vehicle and crew for deep space.”
“I did not.”
“That’s what just came in encrypted in my
email. That will be the only beyond-orbit test flight we get before initiating the long countdown for the actual mission. Wherever those dream engines came from, they must be damn sure of them. You’ll get to test them with a few seconds of engagement, and that’s it. Then afterward, the space station Navigation Scanning Verification Group can use the data to certify you for deep space.”
“Any other surprises I should know about?”
“Hey, at least I’m glad to have known something you didn’t.” He laughed. “There’s quite a few rocks enslaved to that dwarf. The test mission objective is to locate the correct one. The retrieval portion of the test flight plan may have a mistake in it, though. There’s a part that’s too strange to be legitimate.”
“Like what?”
“It says the objective is to locate and retrieve a simulated artifact that will be placed on one of the dwarf’s asteroids by a probe.”
“What’s funny about that?”
“It says the simulated artifact is the lug nut locking key to a 1995 Corvette.”
“No.”
“Yes, that’s what it says. Do you have any idea why they’d put that in there?”
“It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?”
Without answering, I got up and stomped out of the room. In the parking lot, I searched the center console of my car. It was missing. While I had been busy talking to Bernard, the little bastard had his people steal the lug nut locking key out of my car. It was Bernard’s idea of a joke. My lug nut locking key was likely already on its way to a dwarf star sixty AU’s from Earth, where it would sit on a cold desolate rock in space forever unless I could get there and find it. It was such an ingenious ploy it scared me a bit. If I didn’t recover that key, I’d be chiseling lug nut locks off hard-to-find Corvette wheels, not a pleasant thought. I decided not to underestimate Bernard in the future. I also vowed to get him back.