Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

'Who's right?'

'Your boy.' Tucker ran a hand over his face as if he were very tired. 'It is sad.' Baedecker looked at him. Tucker Wilson had flown forty missions over Vietnam and shot down three enemy MiGs in a war almost devoid of aces. Wilson was a career Air Force man, only transferred to duty with NASA.

'I don't mean it's sad that the services are finally flying missions,' Tucker said. 'Shit, the Russians have had a pure military presence up there in the second Salyut station for . . . what? Ten years at least. But it's still sad what's happening here.'

'How so?'

'It's just different, Dick,' said Tucker. 'Back when you were flying and I was on backup, things were simpler. We knew where we were going.'

'To the moon,' said Baedecker.

'Yeah. Maybe the race wasn't all that friendly, but somehow it was more . . . shit, I don't know . . . more pure . Now even the size of the damn bay doors back there was dictated by the DoD.'

'You're just carrying an intelligence-gathering satellite back there,' said Baedecker. 'Not a bomb.' He remembered his father standing on a darkened dock in Arkansas thirty-one years earlier, searching the skies for Sputnik and saying, 'If they can send up something that size, they can put up a bigger one with bombs aboard, can't they?'

'No, it's not a bomb,' agreed Tucker, 'and now that Reagan is history, chances are we won't be spending the next twenty years ferrying up SDI parts either.' Baedecker nodded and glanced toward the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars, but the special glass was shielded for the launch. 'You didn't think it would work?' he asked, referring to the Strategic Defense Initiative — what the press still called, with some derision, Star Wars.

'No, I think it would,' said Tucker. 'But even if the country could afford it — which we can't — a lot of us feel it's too risky. I know that if the Russians started orbiting X-ray lasers and a bunch of other hardware that our technology couldn't match in twenty years . . . or defend against . . . most of the brass I know would be calling for a preemptive attack on whatever they put up.'

'F-16-launched antisatellite stuff?' asked Baedecker.

'Yeah,' said Tucker. 'But say we didn't get everything. Or they replaced it faster than we could shoot it down. What would you advise the president to do, Dick?' Baedecker glanced at his friend. He knew that Tucker was a personal friend of the man who had just won the election to replace Ronald Reagan. 'Threaten surgical strikes of their launch sites,' said Baedecker. The entire shuttle stack seemed to sway slightly in the evening breeze, making Baedecker feel a hint of nausea.

'Threaten?' said Tucker with a grim smile.

Baedecker, knowing from his childhood in Chicago as well as from his years in the Marines just how useless threats can be, said, 'All right, launch surgical strikes against Baikonur and their other launch facilities.'

'Yeah,' said Tucker and there was a long silence broken only by the creaks and groans of the 150-foot external tank lashed to the orbiter's belly. Tucker flicked off the cathode displays. 'I love the Cape, Dick,' he said softly. 'I don't want it blown to shit in a game of tit for tat.' In the sudden darkness, Baedecker breathed in the smell of ozone, lubricant, and plastic polymers; the cockpit smell that had replaced ozone, leather, and sweat. 'Well,' he said, 'the arms deals the last couple of years are a beginning. The satellite you're carrying back there will allow a degree of verification that would've been impossible even ten years ago. And killing ICBMs with good treaties — before the weapons are built — seems more efficient than putting a trillion dollars worth of X-ray lasers in space and hoping for the best.' Tucker laid his hands on the console as if he were sensing with his palms the data and energy that lay dormant there. 'You know,' he said, 'I think the president-elect missed a bet during the campaign.'

'How so?'

'He should've made a deal with the American people and the Soviets,' said Tucker. 'For every ten dollars and ten rubles saved by negotiating away missiles or cutting back SDI, the Russians and us should put ten rubles or ten bucks toward joint space projects. We'd be talking tens of billions of dollars, Dick.'

'Mars?' said Baedecker. When he and Tucker had been training for Apollo , Vice President Agnew had announced that NASA's goal was to land men on Mars by the 1990s. Nixon had not been interested, NASA soon came down from its drunken euphoria, and the dream had receded to the point of invisibility.

'Eventually,' said Tucker, 'but first get the space station going and then put a permanent base on the moon.' Baedecker was amazed to find that his breathing seemed to catch at the thought of men returning to the moon in his lifetime. Men and women, he amended silently. Aloud, he said, 'And you'd be willing to share it with the Russians?' Tucker snorted. 'As long as we don't have to sleep with the bastards,' he said. 'Or fly in their ships. Remember Apollo-Soyuz ?' Baedecker remembered. He and Dave had been part of the first team to sightsee the Soviet space program prior to the Apollo-Soyuz mission. He still remembered Dave's subtle commentary on the flight back. 'State of the art. Jesus, Richard, they call this state of the art! To think we've spent all that energy scaring ourselves and Congress into believing all that stuff about the Soviet space juggernaut, the supertechnologies they're always on the verge of building, and then what do we see? Exposed rivets, electronic packages the size of my grandmother's old Philco radio, and a spacecraft that couldn't perform a docking maneuver if it had a hard-on.' Their written report had been a bit less pointed, but during the Apollo-Soyuz mission the American spacecraft had done all of the chasing and docking and — contrary to original plans — the crews had not switched ships for the landing.

'I don't want to fly in their tubs,' repeated Tucker, 'but if cooperating with them would get NASA back in the space-exploring business, I could put up with the smell.' He unstrapped himself and began climbing down, taking care to use the proper handholds.

'A camel pissing out, eh?' said Baedecker, following carefully.

'What's that?' said Tucker as he crouched in front of the low, round hatch. 'Old Arab proverb,' said Baedecker. 'It's better to have the camel inside your tent pissing out than outside pissing in.' Tucker laughed, removed a stogie from his shirt pocket, and clamped it between his teeth. 'Camel pissing out,' he said and laughed again. 'I like that.' Baedecker waited until Tucker exited and then he crouched, grabbed a metal bar above the hatch, and swung himself out into the delivery-room brightness of the white room.

Early on the morning of the launch, Baedecker sat alone in the coffee shop of his Cocoa Beach motel, watching the surf break and rereading the letter he had received from Maggie Brown three days earlier.

November 17, 1988

Richard ,

I loved your last letter. You write so rarely but every letter means so much. I know you well enough not to know how much you think about and how much you care about . . . and how little you say. Will you ever allow anyone to share the full depths of your insights and feelings? I hope so .

You make Arkansas sound beautiful. The descriptions of early mornings on the lake with the mists rising and crows calling in the bare branches along the shore made me want to be there .

Boston is all slush and traffic and tired brick right now. I love teaching and Dr. Thurston thinks that I'll be ready to begin work on my thesis next April. We'll see .