Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

'I wish you had,' said Baedecker and realized how much truth there was in the statement. Maggie would have loved Dave's sense of humor. Dave would have enjoyed her enjoyment. 'I'm sorry I haven't been in touch,' he said.

'I got your postcard from Idaho,' said Maggie. 'What have you been doing since you were there at your sister's in October?'

'I spent some time in Arkansas,' said Baedecker, 'working on a cabin my father built. It's been empty for a long time. How are you? ' There was a pause, and Baedecker could hear vague, electronic background noises. 'I'm fine,' she said at last. 'Scott's friend Bruce came back to ask me to marry him.' Baedecker felt the wind go out of him much as it had four days earlier when Di's telegram had reached him. 'Are you going to?' he said after a minute.

'I don't think I'll do anything precipitous until I get my master's in May,' she said. 'Hey, I'd better go. Please take care of yourself, Richard.'

'Yes,' Baedecker had said, 'I will.'

The fragments of Dave's T-38 take up a significant amount of space on the floor of the hangar. Smaller and more important pieces lie tagged on a long row of tables.

'So what will the Crash Board findings be?' Baedecker asks Bob Munsen. The Air Force major frowns and sticks his hands in the pockets of the green flight jacket. 'The way it looks now, Dick, is that there was a slight structural failure on takeoff that caused the hydraulic leak. Dave got a red light on it about fourteen minutes out from Portland International and turned back immediately.'

'I still don't see why he was flying out of Portland,' says Baedecker.

'Because that's where I'd parked the goddamned thing right before Christmas,' says Munsen. 'I was scheduled to ferry it to Ogden on the twenty-seventh and Dave wanted to ride. He was going to catch a commercial flight out of Salt Lake.'

'But you got hung up for forty-eight hours,' says Baedecker. 'At McChord?'

'Yeah,' says Munsen, and there is disgust and regret in the syllable, as if he should have been in the aircraft when it crashed.

'So why didn't Dave use his priority status to bump someone on a commercial flight if he had to get back so quickly?' Baedecker says, knowing no one there has the answer.

Munsen shrugs. 'Ryan wanted the T-38 at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden by the twenty-eighth. Dave had my clearance and wanted to fly it. When he called, I told him go ahead, I'd deadhead back to Hill.' Baedecker walks over and looks at the charred metal on the table. 'Okay,' he says, 'structural failure, hydraulic leak. How serious?'

'We figure he'd lost about sixty percent of assist by the time he went down,' says Munsen. 'Have you heard the tape?'

'Not yet,' says Baedecker. 'What about the starboard engine?'

'He got a light about a minute after the hydraulic problem showed up,' replies Munsen. 'He shut it down about eight minutes before impact.'

' Jesus Fucking Christ!' shouts Baedecker and slams his fist into the table hard enough to send tagged pieces flying. 'Who the fuck crewed this thing?'

'Sergeant Kitt Toliver at McChord,' says Munsen in a thin voice. 'Best crew chief heading the best crew we've got. Kitt flew down with me for this seminar in Portland over Christmas. The weather closed in, and I drove back up to McChord on the twenty-sixth, but Kitt was in town. He did two inspections of it the day Dave flew. You know how these things are, Dick.'

'Yeah,' says Baedecker, and there is no lessening of the anger in his voice, 'I know how these things are. Did Dave do a complete preflight?'

'He was in a hurry,' says the major, 'but Toliver says he did.'

'Bob, I'd like to talk to Fields and the others,' says Baedecker. 'Could you get them together for me?'

'Not today,' says Munsen. 'They're spread all over the place. I could do it by tomorrow morning, but they wouldn't be very happy about it.'

'Do it, please,' says Baedecker.

'Kitt Toliver's here now,' says Munsen. 'Up at the NCO mess. Do you want to talk to him now?'

'No,' says Baedecker, 'later. First I have to listen to the flight tape. Thanks, Bill, I'll see you tomorrow morning.' Baedecker shakes hands and goes to listen to his friend's voice for the last time.

'Let's get drunk and stick beans up our noses!' shouted Dave. His voice echoed down the dark streets of Lonerock. 'Sweet Christ on a stick, what a beautiful night!' Baedecker zipped up his goosedown jacket and leaped into the jeep as Dave gunned the engine.

'Full moon!' shouted Dave and howled like a wolf. From somewhere in the hills beyond the town came the high yelping of a coyote. Dave laughed and drove east past the boarded-up Methodist church. Suddenly he slammed the jeep to a stop and grabbed Baedecker by the arm. He pointed to the white disk of the moon. 'We walked up there,' he said, and although his voice was low, there was no denying the urgency and pleasure there. 'We walked up there, Richard. We left our little anthropoid, hindpawprints in the moon's dirt, man. And they can't take that away from us.' Dave revved the engine and drove on, singing They Can't Take That Away from Me at the top of his voice.

The jeep ride lasted for less than a mile and ended in Kink Weltner's field. Dave pulled clipboards and flashlights out of the back of the Huey and ran a careful inspection, even crawling under the dark mass of the ship to make sure there was no condensation in the fuel line. They were on the flat roof deck of the ship, checking rotor hub, mast, control rods, and the Jesus nut when Baedecker said, 'We don't really want to do this, do we?'

'Why not?' said Dave.

'It'll wake up Kink.' It was the only thing Baedecker could think of on short notice.

Dave laughed. 'Nothin' wakes Kink up. Come on.'

Baedecker climbed downward and in. He settled himself in the left seat, clicked the shoulder straps to the broad lap belt, tugged on the regulation National Guard helmet that he had left off on the flight out, wiggled the earphones in place, and blinked at the circles of red light glowing at him from the center console. Dave leaned forward to do the cockpit check while Baedecker read off the positions of circuit breakers. When he finished, Dave slid a piece of equipment into metal brackets on his side of the console and ran radio jacks to it.

'What the hell is that?'

'Tape deck,' said Dave. 'No self-respecting Huey flies without it.' The starter whined, rotors turned, and the turbine coughed and caught.

Dave clicked in the intercom. His voice was muffled. 'Next stop, Stonehenge.'

'How's that?'

'Just watch and wait, amigo. Oh, are my goggles on straight?' Baedecker glanced over to his right. Dave was wearing bulky night-vision goggles, but the face under the goggles and helmet was not Dave's. It was not even human. In the red cockpit glow, Baedecker could make out two huge eyes protruding at forty-five-degree angles on short, fleshy stalks, a wide, lipless frog's mouth, no chin, and a neck as lined and wattled as an aged turkey's.

'Yeah, they're on straight,' said Baedecker. 'Thanks.'

Three minutes later they were hovering twenty-five hundred feet above Lonerock. A few lights shone below. 'You didn't care for my Admiral Ackbar?' asked Dave.

'Au contraire,' said Baedecker, 'it was the best Admiral Ackbar mask I've seen in weeks. Why are you doing that?' Dave had triggered the landing-light extension switch on the collective pitch control lever. Now he was flicking the on-off switch. Baedecker could see the flashes through his chin bubble.

'Just sendin' extraterrestrial greetings and felicitations to Miz Callahan,' said Dave, 'so she can call it a night and go to bed.' He retracted the light and pitched the Huey over in a banking turn.

They passed over Condon at five thousand feet. Baedecker saw lights glowing around an empty bandstand in a small park, an abandoned main street frozen in the glow of mercury-vapor lamps, and darkened side streets dappled with glimpses of streetlights through tall old trees. It suddenly occurred to Baedecker that small towns in America were saner than cities because they were allowed to sleep.