Moonstruck. Part 1

Edward M. Lerner.

Moonstruck.

PROLOGUE.

"T minus five minutes, and holding."

It wasn't even ten in the morning, but the day was already hot. Kyle Gustafson squirted another dollop of

sunscreen into his palm, then rubbed his hands together. Smearing it over his face and neck, he grimaced: he reeked of coconut oil. He made a mental note to avoid all open flames until he showered.

Kyle had a Scottish-American mother and a Swedish-American father, a combination that Dad called

industrial-strength WASP. He didn't belong below the forty-fifth parallel, let alone outside beneath Cape Canaveral's summer, subtropical sun-but he never missed an opportunity to witness a launch. His job helped: who better than the presidential science advisor to escort visiting foreign dignitaries to Kennedy s.p.a.ce Center?

"You could wear a hat, my friend."I look really stupid in hats, Kyle thought. Turning toward his Russian counterpart, he suppressed that answer as impolitic. Instead, he changed the subject. "Sorry for the delay, Sergei. The hold is built into the schedule to allow time for responding to minor glitches."

"T minus five minutes, and holding."

His guest said nothing. Sergei Denisovich Arbatov was tall, wiry, and tanned. He'd been born and raised

in the Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula once popularly called the Russian Riviera. That nickname had gone out of vogue when the USSR self-destructed, and an independent Ukraine had made it clear that ethnic Russians were no longer welcome. In 1992, Sergei had moved his family to Moscow, where he'd moved up rapidly in the new, democratic government. It wasn't clear to Kyle how Sergei avoided the Muscovite's traditional pallor-unless it was by finagling trips to Florida.

"T minus five minutes, and counting."

The single-word change in the announcement made Kyle's pulse race. Across the plain from their vantage point at the VIP launch viewing area, Atlantis s.h.i.+mmered through the rising waves of heated air.The shuttle on Launch Pad 39B stood 184 feet tall, the dartlike body of the orbiter dwarfed by the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank to which it was attached. All but the tank were white; the expendable metal tank, once also painted white, was now left its natural rust color to reduce takeoff weight by 750 pounds.

"T minus four minutes, thirty seconds, and counting."

Kyle continued his standard briefing. "The gross weight of the shuttle at launch is about 4.5 million pounds, Sergei. Impressive, don't you think?"

"Apollo/Saturn V weighed a half again more." The gray-haired Russian smiled sadly. "We never made it

to the moon, and you Americans have forgotten how. I don't know who disappoints me more."

Kyle had been thirteen the night of the first moon landing. Afterward, he'd lain awake all night, scheming how he, too, would sometime, somehow, make a giant leap for mankind. The idealist in him

still shared Arbatov's regrets. Many days, only that boy's dream sustained Kyle through Was.h.i.+ngton's game-playing and inanity. Someday, he told himself, he would make it happen.Someday seemed never to get closer.

"T minus four minutes, and counting."

Nervously, Kyle ran his fingers through hair once flame-red. Age had banked the fire with ashes, for a net effect beginning to approach salmon. Too late, he remembered the sunscreen that coated his hands.

"We'll go back, Sergei," he answered softly, speaking really to himself. "Men will walk again on the

moon. Will visit other worlds, too." He shook off the sudden gloom. "First, though, we've got a satellite to launch."

"T minus three minutes, ten seconds, and counting." Loudspeakers all around them blared the

announcement.The Earth's atmosphere is effectively opaque to gamma radiation. In 1991, to begin a whole new era in astronomy, Atlantis had delivered the Gamma Ray Observatory to low Earth orbit. After years of spectacular success, the GRO had had one too many gyroscopes fail. NASA had deorbited it in 2000, in a spectacular but controlled Pacific Ocean crash.Now another Atlantis crew was ready to deploy GRO's replacement. Major Les Griffiths, the mission commander, had proposed that the mission badges on the crew's flight suits read, "Your full-spectrum delivery service." The suggestion was rejected as too flippant. A mere three missions into the post-Columbia resumption of shuttle flights, American nerves remained raw.

"Da." Arbatov turned to the distant shuttle. He sounded skeptical. "Then let us watch."The remaining minutes pa.s.sed with glacial slowness. Finally, a brilliant spark flashed beneath Atlantis. Golden flames lashed at 300,000 gallons of water in the giant heat/sound-suppression trench beside the launch pad, hiding the shuttle in a sudden cloud of steam. Kyle's heart, as always, skipped a beat, anxious for the top of the shuttle to emerge from the fog. A wall of sound more felt than heard washed over them. Faster than he could ever believe possible, no matter how often he saw it, the shuttle shot skyward on a column of fire and smoke. Chase planes in pursuit, it angled eastward and headed out over the ocean. The sound receded to a rumble as he shaded his eyes to watch.

"Kyle!"

The American reluctantly returned his attention to his guest. Arbatov still stared at the disappearing

s.p.a.cecraft, one of the mission-frequency portable radios that Kyle's position had allowed him to commandeer pressed tightly to his ear. Kyle's own radio, turned off, hung from his wrist.

"Nyet, nyet, nyet!" shouted the Russian.The presidential advisor snapped on his own radio. "Roger that," said the pilot. "Abort order acknowledged." The hypercalm, hypercrisp words made Kyle's blood run cold.

A speck atop a distant flame, the shuttle continued its climb. The far-off flame suddenly dimmed; the three main engines had been extinguished. What the h.e.l.l was happening? "Shutdown sequence complete. Pressure in the ET"-external tank-"still rising. Jettisoning tank and SRBs." Unseen explosive bolts severed the manned orbiter from the external tank; freed from the ma.s.sive orbiter, the tank and its still-attached, nonextinguishable, solid-fuel rocket boosters quickly shot clear. The manned orbiter coasted after them, for the moment, on momentum.

Clutching their radios, Kyle and his guest leaned together for rea.s.surance. "Pressure still increasing."

Light glinted mockingly off the sun-tracking Astronaut Memorial, the granite monolith engraved with the names of astronauts killed in the line of duty. It seemed all too likely that the list was about to grow by five more names.

"Pressure nearing critical." He recognized the voice from Mission Control. "Report status."

What pressure? In the ET? Was it about to blow? Two Sea-Air Rescue choppers thundered overhead as he did a quick calculation. The ET must still contain at least 250,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen!"Beginning OMS burn."The distant speck regrew a flame-had the orbital-maneuvering-system engines ever been fired before inside the atmosphere?-and began banking toward the coast. Unaided by SRBs, its main engines unusable without the ET, the orbiter seemed to lumber. Seemed mortally wounded. "Suggest my escorts make tracks."

"Pressure at critical. Crit plus ten. Crit plus twenty. Twenty-three. Twenty-four."An enormous fireball blossomed above the escaping orbiter. From miles away, Kyle saw the craft stagger as the shock wave struck. "Tell Beth that I love her." The distant flame pinwheeled as Atlantisbegan to tumble. Moments later, the roar and the shock wave of the blast reached the Cape, whipping Kyle and Sergei with a sudden gale of sand and grit. The distant spark extinguished as safety circuits shut down the tumbling craft's rocket engines.The orbiter began its long plunge to the sea, with both chase planes diving futilely after it.Like its mythical namesake, the orbiter Atlantis slipped beneath the silent and uncaring waves to meet its fate.

GIFT HORSE.

CHAPTER 1.

Without warning, the Toyota pickup swerved in front of Kyle. He tapped his brakes lightly-this near the I-66 exit to the Beltway, such maneuvers were hardly unexpected-and gave a pro forma honk. The yahoo in the pickup responded with the traditional one-fingered salute. The truck's rear b.u.mper bore the message: Have comments about my driving? Email:

Such is the state of discourse in the nation's capital.

Sighing, Kyle turned up his radio for the semihourly news summary. There was no preview of this

morning's hearing. That was fine with him: he'd never learned to speak in sound bites. If the session made tomorrow's Was.h.i.+ngton Post, his testimony might rate a full paragraph of synopsis.The good news was today's topic wasn't the Atlantis.Reliving the disaster in his dreams was hard enough; the science advisor's presence had also become de rigueur for every anti-NASA representative or senator who wanted to use the disaster to justify ending the manned s.p.a.ce program. Challenger, Columbia, and now Atlantis . . . after three shuttle catastrophes, they spoke for much of the country. By comparison, today's session about technology for improved enforcement of the Clean Air Act would be positively benign.

As traffic crept forward, he tried to use the time to further prepare for the senatorial grilling. He knew the types of questions his boss would have posed to ready him: What would he volunteer in his opening statement? What information needed to be metered out in digestible chunks? Whose home district had a contractor who'd want to bid on the program? Who was likely to leave the session early for other hearings? All the wrong questions, of course, when Kyle wanted to talk about remote-sensing technology and computing loads. There was too little science in the job of presidential science advisor.

In any event, he had to swing by his bas.e.m.e.nt cranny in the OEOB for last-minute instructions. He turned off his radio, which was in any event unable to compete with the ba.s.s booming from the sport-ute in the next lane.

The Old Executive Office Building was as far as Kyle got that day-or the next one. About the time he'd traded witticisms with the driver of the Toyota pickup, the emissaries of the Galactic Commonwealth had announced their imminent arrival on Earth by interrupting the TV broadcast of A.M. America.

* * * The White House situation room held the humidity and stench of too many occupants. Men and women alike had lost their jackets; abandoned neckties were strewn about like oversized, Technicolor Christmas tinsel. Notepad computers vied for desk s.p.a.ce with pizza boxes, burger wrappers, and soda cans.

In cl.u.s.ters of two and three, the crisis team muttered in urgent consultation. A few junior staffers sat exiled in the corners, glued to the TV monitors. Everything was being taped, but everyone wanted to see the aliens' broadcasts live. Watching a new message, even if it differed not a whit from the last twenty, provided momentary diversion from the many uncertainties.

Neither Kyle's PalmPilot nor the remaining pizza had wisdom to offer. He looked up at the entry of Britt Arledge, White House chief of staff and Kyle's boss and mentor. The President's senior aide could have been a poster child for patricians: tall and trim, with chiseled features, icy blue eyes, a furrowed brow, and a full head of silver hair. Within the politico's exterior sat a brilliant, if wholly unscientific, mind.

Arledge's forte was recognizing other people's strengths, and building the right team for tackling any problem.

Kyle wondered whether his boss's legendary insight extended to the Galactics.

"So what have we got?"

He parted a path for them through the crowded room to the whiteboard where he'd already summarized

the data. The list was short. "Not much, but what we do have is amazing.

"The moon now has its own satellite, and it's two-plus miles across. Not one observatory saw it approaching. Once the broadcasts started and people looked for it, though, there it was."

Arledge had raised an eyebrow at the object's size. The NASA-led international s.p.a.ce station, two orders

of magnitude smaller, was still only half built. "But they can see it now."Kyle nodded. "It's big enough even for decently equipped amateur astronomers to spot." Far better views would be available once STSI, the s.p.a.ce Telescope Science Inst.i.tute in Baltimore, finished computer enhancement of various images. Too bad the supersensitive instruments on the Hubble s.p.a.ce Telescope would be struck blind if it looked so close to the moon. "To no one's great surprise, it doesn't look like anything we've ever seen. Or ever built. The way that it simply appeared suggests teleportation or subs.p.a.ce tunneling or some other mode of travel whose underlying physics we can't begin to understand."

"What else?"

"You've seen the broadcasts, obviously." At Britt's shrug, Kyle continued. "That's a pretty alien-looking

alien. Also, White Sands, Wallops, Jodrell Bank, and Arecibo all confirm direct receipt from the moon of the signal that keeps preempting network broadcasts. Overriding network satellite feed, to be precise."So far, that's it. I suspect we'll know a lot more soon."

"Commercial," called one of the exiles.

At the burst of typing that announced redirection of the signal, everyone turned forward to the projection screen. A famous pitchman vanished from the display almost so quickly as to be subliminal (it was enough to make Kyle think of Jell-O), to be replaced with the increasingly familiar visage of the Galactic spokesman. No one could read the expression on the alien's face, not that anyone knew that the aliens provided such visual cues, but Kyle found himself liking the creature. What wonderful wit and whimsy to present their announcements only during the commercial breaks.

"Greetings to the people of Earth," began his(?) message. "I am H'ffl. As the amba.s.sador of the Galactic Commonwealth to your planet, the beautiful world of which we were made aware by your many radio transmissions, I am pleased to announce the arrival of our emba.s.sy expedition. We come in peace and fellows.h.i.+p."

Kyle studied the alien's image as familiar words repeated. The creature was vaguely centaurian in