Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

They passed through security checkpoints, and Tucker drove up the long ramp to the base of the Service and Access Tower. Another guard approached them, saw Tucker, saluted, and stepped back into the shadows. Baedecker and Scott got out of the car and stood looking up at the machine poised above them.

To Baedecker's eye the shuttle — or the SSTS, Space Shuttle Transportation System as the engineers liked to call the entire package of orbiter, external tank, and solid rocket boosters — looked jerry-rigged and awkward, an unlikely coupling of species neither aircraft nor rocket, creating a sort of interim evolutionary form. Baedecker realized, not for the first time, that he was looking at a space-faring platypus. Now it struck him with full force how much the space shuttle — that much-vaunted symbol of America's technology — already had become an assemblage of aging, almost obsolete equipment. Like the older command pilots who flew them, the surviving shuttles carried the dreams of the 1960s and the technology of the 1970s into the unknowns of the 1990s, substituting wisdom from painfully learned lessons for the unlimited energy of youth.

Baedecker liked the look of the rust-colored external fuel tank. It made sense not to burn precious fuel lifting tons of paint into the fringes of space only to have the expendable, thin-skinned tank burn up seconds later, but the effect of such common sense was to make the shuttle look more workaday, almost battered, a good, used pickup truck rather than the classy showroom models flown in earlier space programs. Despite — or perhaps because of — this new-paint-over-the-old-rust feel to the entire ungainly machine, Baedecker realized that if he were still a flying member of the team, he would love the shuttle with the kind of pure and unreasonable passion men usually reserved for wives or lovers.

As if reading Baedecker's mind, Tucker said, 'She's beautiful, isn't she?'

'She is that,' agreed Baedecker. Without thinking about it, he let his gaze wander to the aft field joint of the right-hand solid rocket booster. But if there were O-ring demons lurking there, waiting to destroy ship and crew by raking sudden tongues of flame across the hydrogen-primed bomb of the external tank, there was no sign of them today. But then, Baedecker realized, there had been no sign of them to the Challenger crew either.

Around them, men in white went about their business with the insect-intensity of technicians everywhere. Tucker pulled three yellow hard hats from the back seat of the Plymouth and tossed one to Baedecker and another to Scott. They moved closer and craned their necks to look up again.

'She's something, isn't she,' said Tucker. 'Quite a sight,' murmured Baedecker. 'Frozen energy,' Scott said to himself. 'What's that?' asked Tucker.

'When I was in India,' Scott said, speaking so softly that his voice was barely audible above background work noises and the soft chug of a nearby compressor, 'I guess, for some reason, I started to think of things . . . to really see things sometimes . . . in terms of energy. People, plants, everything. Used to be, I'd look at a tree and see branches and leaves. Now I tend to see sunlight molded into matter.' Scott hesitated, self-conscious. 'Anyway, that's what this is . . . just a huge fountain of frozen kinetic energy, waiting to thaw into motion.'

'Yeah,' said Tucker. 'There's energy waiting there, all right. Or at least there will be when the tanks are topped off in the morning. About seven million pounds of thrust when those two strap-on roman candles get lit.' He looked at the two of them. 'Want to go up? I promised you a look-see, Dick.'

'I'll wait here,' said Scott. 'See you later, Dad.' Baedecker and Tucker rode up in the pad elevator and stepped out into the white room. Half a dozen Rockwell International technicians in white coveralls, white overboots, and white caps were working in the brilliantly illuminated space.

'This access is a little easier than mounting the Saturn V ,' said Baedecker. 'Had that little boom arm, didn't it?' said Tucker.

'Three hundred and twenty feet up,' said Baedecker, 'I used to lurch across that damn number nine swing arm in full pressure suit, carrying that little portable ventilator that weighed about half a ton, and hold my breath until I got into the white room. I was sure I was the only Apollo hero who was fast developing a fear of heights.'

'We're a little closer to the ground here,' said Tucker. 'Evening, Wendell.' Tucker greeted a technician with earphones connected to a cable jacked into the hull of the shuttle.

'Evening, Colonel. Going inside?'

'For a few minutes,' said Tucker. 'I want to show this old Apollo fossil what a real spacecraft looks like.'

'All right, but wait just a second, please,' said the technician. 'Bolton's on the flight deck running the communications check. He'll be coming down in just a second.' Baedecker ran his hand across the skin of the shuttle. The white tiles were cool to the touch. Close up, the spacecraft showed signs of wear — subtle discolorations between the tiles, flakes of black paint missing, a well-used polish to the fittings on the open entry hatch. The used pickup had been washed and waxed, but it was still a used pickup.

A technician emerged from the round hatch and Wendell said, 'Okay, it's all yours.' Baedecker followed Tucker in, wondering as he did so what had become of Gunter Wendt. The old-hand Mercury and Gemini crews had held Wendt, the first white-room 'pad führer,' in such esteem that they had coerced North American Rockwell into hiring him away from McDonnell when the Apollo program came in.

'Watch your head, Dick,' said Tucker.

They crossed the middeck and climbed to the forward seats on the flight deck. To someone trained in Apollo , the shuttle interior seemed huge. There were two additional couches set behind the pilot's and copilot's seats, and a ladder had led to a single seat on the lower deck.

'Who gets the lonesome spot down there?' asked Baedecker.

'That's Holmquist and he's sick about it,' said Tucker as he slid into the horizontal command pilot's couch. 'He's done everything but bribe one of the other two for a window seat.' Baedecker edged carefully into the right seat. In his center seat in the Apollo Command Module, clumsiness would just have gotten him stuck. A slip now would drop him five or six feet to the windows and instrument bay below him at the rear of the flight deck. He pulled the shoulder harnesses on out of habit, secured the lap belt, but ignored the wide crotch strap.

Several trouble lights hung from hooks, throwing a bright light on the instruments and shadows into the corners. Tucker clicked one of these lamps off and activated several cockpit switches, bathing them both in a red-and-green glow. A cathode ray display directly in front of Baedecker lit up and began running through a litany of meaningless data. The quickly changing lines of data reminded Baedecker of the PanAm passenger shuttle with its flashing cockpit graphics in 2001: A Space Odyssey . Dave had insisted they see that movie a dozen times during the winter of 1968. They had been putting in fourteen-hour shifts supporting Apollo 8 , and then in the evenings they would drive pell-mell across Houston to watch Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, HAL, and the austro-lopithecines perform to the sounds of Bach and Strauss and Ligeti. Dave Muldorff had been quite irritated one night when Baedecker had fallen asleep at the beginning of the fourth reel.

'Like it?' asked Tucker.

Baedecker ran his gaze over the console. He set his hand lightly on the rotational hand controller. 'Very elegant,' he said and meant it.

Tucker tapped at the computer keys on the low console that separated them. New information filled all three of the cathode displays. 'He's right, you know,' Tucker said.