Ben Bova - Able One

Once they got back to Pasadena, Sylvia threw herself even deeper into neighborhood politics, circulating petitions and phoning city hall over this Cause or that. Harry worked longer and longer hours at the lab. The high-power laser project was moving along smartly. They called it the COIL: chemical oxygen iodine laser. Powerful stuff.

He knew he and Sylvia were becoming strangers to each other, but he didn’t know what to do about it. At her insistence they went to a marriage counselor, who recommended they both see a psychologist. Reluctantly, Harry agreed to it, secretly terrified that somebody at the lab might find out.

“You’re boringly normal,” the psychologist told him.

The marriage counselor recommended they take a romantic ocean cruise. Harry stopped going to her, although Sylvia continued weekly sessions for more than a year. Harry wondered what she found to talk about every week.

The years slid past relentlessly. Jacob Levy was one of the more supercilious physicists on the lab’s staff, but he got along pretty well with Harry. Levy knew how to keep his nose out of places where it shouldn’t be.

“I’ll do the thinking,” he often told Harry’s team of engineers. “All you have to do is make it work.”

They made a good team. With Jake’s brains and our hands, Harry thought, we’ll make this laser actually work.

Inevitably the COIL program moved into the testing stage, and they had to transport all the hardware out to the Mohave Desert.

Harry sensed Sylvia’s eyes boring into his back as he packed his soft-sided travel bag. He turned and, sure enough, his wife was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking distinctly displeased.

“So you’ll be gone for a week?” Sylvia asked. She had that accusing stare on her face; her district attorney look, Harry secretly called it. In school she’d been on the student council, combining earnestness and winning smiles to gather votes and move molehills. It had been a long time since he’d seen her smile—except when they were out with other couples. Then Sylvia could be the life of the party. At home, though, she was the district attorney.

“Maybe a little more than a week,” he said, feeling almost guilty about it. He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. Maybe I ought to get a crew cut, he thought idly. Save a lot of time trying to keep it looking neat.

“Vickie’s birthday is a week from Wednesday,” Sylvia said. “You’ll be home by then, won’t you?”

“Should be.”

“Should be? What do you mean, ‘should be’? It’s your daughter’s birthday, for god’s sake. Don’t you have any feelings for your own daughter? I know you’d rather play around with your buddies than be with me, but you’d better come back in time for her birthday!”

Harry fought down an impulse to throw something at her. Zipping the travel bag, he said tightly, “I’m not playing around out there. It’s strictly business, and it’s important.”

“Important. Sure. More important than me. More important than your daughters. They hardly ever see you! You’re out of here at the crack of dawn and you don’t come home until after dark. Now you’re traipsing out to the desert.”

“It’s my job, for Chrissakes!” he said, trying to keep his voice down.

“Your job,” Sylvia said, dripping acid.

“It’s important.”

“So important you can’t tell me anything about it.”

“That’s right. The program is classified, military secret.”

“Out in the desert.”

“Right.” Harry glanced at his wristwatch. Monk should be driving up soon.

“Where will you be staying out in the Mohave?”

“The Air Force is putting us up in a motel.”

“A motel?”

“That’s right.” He lifted his bag off the bed and started for the door. Sylvia stood in the doorway like an armed guard.

“What’s the name of this motel? The phone number?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll keep my cell phone on. You can call me on it if you need to.”

Sylvia looked up into his eyes. He saw resentment smoldering in hers, and anger, and plenty of suspicion.

“So you’re walking out on me.”

“Sylvia, it’s only for a goddamned week! Ten days at most.”

“Leaving me and the girls to fend for ourselves.”

He grasped her shoulder and pushed her back from the doorway, out into the hall. As he reached the stairs he heard the toot of Monk Delany’s car horn.

“I’ve got to go now,” Harry said, starting down the carpeted stairs.

Sylvia stayed in the upper hallway, glowering at him. Harry felt enormously relieved to be getting out of the house and away from her.

Over his shoulder he called, “Kiss the girls for me when they get back from school.”

“How many girls are you going to kiss out there in that damned motel?” Sylvia yelled after him.

Harry was startled by that. She’s worried that I’ll shack up with somebody else? The thought had never entered his mind. Actually, it had, now and then. But he’d never acted on it.

He was surprised again when he saw that Monk was driving a mint-new Mustang convertible, fire-engine red.

“Where’s the Chrysler?” Harry asked as he tossed his travel bag onto the narrow bench behind the bucket seats.

Monk gave an unhappy snort. “The old gray ghost’s transmission crapped out. I’ve got to use the wife’s new car and she’s plenty steamed up about it.”

Harry slid into the seat and slammed the door shut. As Monk gunned the convertible down the street Harry thought again about Sylvia accusing him of shacking up with some other woman. As if I’d ever do that, he said to himself with some indignation.

“Ten -hut!” The seven engineers and test technicians turned from their control boards and, grinning, arranged themselves in a ragged line. Several of them gave sloppy salutes.

As he stepped through the steel hatch into the blockhouse, Brigadier General Brad Scheib smiled tightly at them. “I can see none of you geniuses was ever in the military.”

Harry felt disappointed. “You’re not wearing your star, General.”

Scheib wasn’t even in uniform. He wore a checkered short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck, and comfortable chino slacks.

“I don’t want to look overdressed,” he said. The civilians were all in faded denims and company-issued white T-shirts that read ANSON AEROSPACE across their backs, with the stylized A of the corporation’s logo on their chests. Pete Quintana’s shirt was emblazoned with EL JEFE sewn just above the logo.

Scheib was accompanied by Jacob Levy, the chief scientist on the laser project. Like General Scheib, Levy wore a sport shirt and slacks, although his shirt was sparkling white and crisply starched, distinctly out of place in the baking desert heat. Levy was the man in charge, working directly with the newly promoted General Scheib and responsible only to Victor Anson, who owned the company.

“Are you ready to run?” Levy asked Quintana.

Nodding, the engineer replied, “We’re going through the final checkout. Be ready to fire up the beast in ten minutes or so.”

The control center had been a blockhouse years ago, when the Air Force was testing rocket engines for missiles at this remote desert site. It was unglamorous, strictly utilitarian: bare concrete walls, half a dozen desk-sized consoles with their display screens and keyboards, strip lamps across the steel beams supporting the ceiling, a panel of monitoring gauges fastened to the concrete of the rear wall. The air-conditioning was pitiful: several of the men’s shirts were already sweat-stained, and Taki Nakamura’s shirt clung to her slim bosom.