John Nance - Orbit

“I’m so sorry, Alastair.”

Utter confusion crackles through Alastair’s brain, the words making no sense. His father should be angry, stern, gesturing red-faced, and working his way to some sort of punishment. Some yelling wouldn’t scare him half as much as this.

Yet he’s standing here almost holding me off the ground and crying.

“Dad, I don’t understand.”

“It’s hard to explain, son.”

“Could… could you try?”

“I just want to hug you for a second, okay?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“There was a time I could put you on my knee, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re too big now, but I miss that.”

And at last Bob Wood holds his son back at arm’s length and smooths his hair with one hand while keeping a steely grip on his shoulder with the other.

“I’m the one who’s kind of taken things for granted, son. I’ve been hard on you, even when you’ve done such a good job in school. I tell you when I’m upset with you, but I haven’t told you enough when I’ve been pleased.”

“You’re pleased ?”

His father is nodding, smiling, his big wet face looking like some benevolent alien rather than his strict dad. He thinks about asking, “Who are you and what have you done with my father?” but he’s too shocked to be funny.

“I’ve let myself get too busy to be there for all your games and plays and things. And we haven’t gone walkabout for a year.”

“You’ve been to almost everything, Dad, and I know you’re busy.”

“So was the poor fellow you discovered, Alastair. He was very busy, and he missed some of his son’s stuff, too, and there he sits in orbit, dying, can’t tell his kid how proud he is of him, and how much…” The sentence trails off, incomplete.

“Dad…”

“And about the hacking. Did you tell the authorities what you found when you found it?”

“Yes, sir. I e-mailed the space company in California and they thanked me.”

“Then I couldn’t be prouder of you.”

The bear hug starts again, along with words he can’t recall ever hearing.

“I love you, son!”

Alastair can feel him shaking slightly, and he pats his father’s shoulder.

“That’s okay, Dad. Really. I love you, too.”

The Deputy Space Shuttle Program Manager stands on an upper gantry bridge and adjusts his death grip on the railing. So far, even after three decades at the Cape, no one knows he’s a hopeless acrophobic, and he intends to keep it that way.

It would be useful to look over the side to the base of the launch pad some one hundred and fifty feet below to see whether Jerry Curtis had stepped into the elevator yet, but Griggs Hopewell is not about to try it. What happens to his head with such a view is a nightmare he’s smart enough not to revisit.

Ever!

Predictably, Curtis—the Director of Safety and Mission Assurance—was anything but pleased about being called out to the top of the launch complex. They haven’t gotten along for years, and though Griggs tries to keep the volatile manager’s feathers unruffled and tries to listen to his department’s constant dithering, there are times he has to pull rank, and this is definitely one of them.

Griggs smiles at his memory of their brief conversation.

“Well, why don’t you just come to my office?” Curtis whined.

“Nope. High-level meetings are best held in high places. Gantry, top tier, Pad 39B in twenty minutes. That’s an order, Bub!”

Griggs takes a deep breath. “Where the hell is that insubordinate bastard!” he growls to himself. The delay is wearing thin, even though he’ll never tire of standing beside the monstrous form of the shuttle, especially when it’s mated to the solid rocket boosters and external tank and poised, ready for launch, as it is now.

There’s still a chance they can make the launch window, but with each new delay, that hope becomes more iffy. After a cut cable, a safety stop, two personnel complaints about overtime that spilled all the way up to D.C., and the latest dust-up over the fueling schedule, he’s beginning to detect sabotage in the air, although, given the fact that the rescue involves Richard DiFazio’s company, some forms of sabotage even from the administrator himself would be unsurprising.

Griggs shakes his head, thinking of the Ahab-like determination Geoff Shear has shown to find the fatal flaws in private spaceflight in general. But in the case of DiFazio—perhaps the only man to publicly unmask Shear’s deceptions in front of the Senate and the public—his little company has become the white whale, the Moby Dick Captain Ahab is determined to find and kill.

His thoughts snap back to the gantry and the present, and the presumed interference aided by Curtis, who seems to be rubber-stamping even the most flimsy concerns as genuine safety problems.

The elevator is rising now, and Griggs readjusts his grip and waits, watching the gulls soaring lazily in the mid-day sun.

The elevator cage door opens and disgorges Curtis who appears spoiling for a fight, yet smart enough not to start one.

“Okay, Griggs, I’m here. What?”

“Jerry, see this big old thing we’re standing beside?”

“No, Griggs, I see nothing,” he snaps, the sarcastic tone barely contained. “Must be your vivid imagination. Come on, man, you didn’t call me up here to admire the damn launch vehicle.”

“Well, I called you up here to answer a very simple question.”

“Yeah?”

“You want to launch this thing on time?”

“What? Of course!”

“You understand the go order comes from the President of these here United States, right? And he’s the ultimate boss?”

“What are you saying? That I’m doing something to frustrate this launch? Have you forgotten the basics of system safety?”

“We had a cut cable this morning. How’d it get cut?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got an investigation going. It doesn’t look like anything but a mistake.”

“I’m getting a work-to-rule headache out here, too, with those two clowns filing their complaint last night.”

“It’s handled.”

“Yeah, but why now, Jerry? I checked those two. They’ve never, ever, been upset by the very thing they jumped on this morning. Someone ask them to complain, perhaps?”

“I don’t like your implication, Griggs.”

“Well, I don’t like delays unless they are truly safety-related, and the reason I called you up here is so I could say this to you clearly and without excessive ears around. If you or any of your people—including that little gal from D.C. who’s been lurking around…”

“Dorothy?”

“The same.”

“She’s just doing routine safety audits.”

“Right. And I’ve got beachfront property in Phoenix for sale. If anyone starts using artificial safety reasons to delay this launch, Shear won’t be able to save the culprit from professional oblivion, you included.”

“Are we done here?”

“I hope so. I just want to make sure you understand. A presidential order means a national priority. If it’s really a safety issue, I’m with you. If it’s artificial, I’ll strap your ass on one of these SRBs and launch it myself.”

Jerrod enters the smoky den tentatively, like his invitation might have expired and he doesn’t want to get caught gawking at the animal heads and plaques and other artifacts on what Mike Summers calls his “I Love Me Wall.”

He’s spent most of the day with Julie watching his father’s story and words. Even Sharon was decent to him, and he feels beaten down enough to appreciate that, putting his discomfort around her on hold so as to support his dad with his attention and his remorse.