“Thank you for having me on your show, Ellen. I used to avoid daytime television like the plague. That was before your show. Now I’m hooked at 3 p.m. every day.”
“Thank for the vote of confidence, professor. Please tell us about Stargazer.”
“I’ll tell you everything that I can, Ellen, but as you’re aware, many of the details about Stargazer are top secret. Stargazer, the most recent operational space station, is similar in design to the International Space Station, or ISS, on which the Rosetta Corporation was the major contractor. Stargazer, is 240 feet long, 370 feet wide, and 70 feet high. It’s capable of carrying a crew of six, but is currently manned by only two astronauts, Nancy Mullin and Bill Cranston. They’re both friends of mine, and both highly skilled engineers.”
“Professor,” Ellen said, “I don’t think I’m stretching the truth when I say that the damned thing seems to be on the blink. Two tests went haywire, resulting in our lovely July and August blizzards when the satellites that Stargazer controls didn’t respond properly to commands. And now we understand that communication broke down between Stargazer and the Rosetta Corporation, the station’s owner. If signals from earth are being received by the station, we don’t know it. It seems to be a communications blackout. How can that be professor?”
“Of one thing we’re certain,” Crawford lied, “the communications problems with Stargazer are completely natural, and not caused by anything on earth. It isn’t unusual for a communications breakdown to occur between earth and a space station or satellite. As exciting as it may sound, nobody is causing this problem.”
Ellen was amazed at the way Crawford lied so smoothly.
“Yesss,” Rick Bellamy did a fist pump from his office where he was watching the show. “Did you catch that, Jake?” He said to the president’s chief of staff who was on the phone. “This guy Crawford is perfect.”
“The good news, professor, is that the temperatures have moderated across the country and are now close to normal,” Ellen said. “But can anything be done about the communication blackout?”
“We’ll need to exercise a lot of patience, Ellen. We can’t change something that we don’t control.”
“What about food replenishment, professor? The astronauts can’t go shopping at a nearby 7-11.”
“I understand that a supply rocket will soon visit Stargazer.”
“But the resupply rocket blew up a few moments after takeoff,” Ellen said.
“Of course, we all heard about that accident, but it only takes a few days to launch another supply vehicle,” he lied.
Crawford answered questions for the next 15 minutes about life aboard a space station, holding back details when he thought he must.
“Thank you, Professor Crawford, for shining light on an increasingly dark subject.”
“Crawford’s a great guy,” Rick said as Ellen walked into the apartment. “I want you to book him on your show for next week. He’s the best source of disinformation we ever had.”
“I have to admit that this stuff gives me the creeps, Rick. I get paid a ton of money to host my show, and here I am asking this guy questions that I know he’s going answer with lies. “
“Hey, babe, you, me, Crawford, and a lot of other people share a common trait. We’re American patriots, and if that means sometimes playing hardball with the facts, so be it. Bartholomew Martin and his turds wouldn’t hesitate to slit our throats if the opportunity presented itself. So, what if we’re using your show to mind fuck some horrible characters?”
“You’re right, Rick. I just like to hear it from you to make my conscience clear. When it comes to Bartholomew Martin, I’d rather shoot the bastard than have people lie on my show, but we have to do what we have to do.”
“Look at it this way, hon—you’re just asking questions. Crawford’s the one who’s doing the lying.”
“I’m worried about something, Rick. We may be doing a good job of confusing the Reformer thugs, but what about those two astronauts on Stargazer? They’re real live people, and they’re the ones who will take the hit if Martin figures out that we’re on to him.”
Chapter 52
August 12
“This whispering sucks, Bill.”
“But we have to assume that whoever is responsible for this shit can hear our every word. I’m sure this Food Truck is laced with bugs we can’t find. We can talk freely when we’re aboard Stargazer, but not here on Food Truck. I’m going to take a wild guess that the communications blackout, if there ever was one, is caused by the same pricks who sent the assassins to resupply us. We’ve got to keep them in the dark as much as possible. Let me read those papers you gave me.”
“You’re going to freak out, hon.”
“I can’t believe what I’m reading, Nance,” Bill said after reading just two pages. “Whoever’s running this show is planning to take over the entire control of Stargazer. That’s why those two guys wanted to kill us. They were the new management team.”
“Unit 359, Unit 359, this is Homebase, come in,” came the words over the console in Food Truck One.
“The home office is calling, and they’re not using the words Food Truck. So much for the communications blackout lies.” Nancy whispered. “We’ve got to come up with some convincing bullshit—fast.”
“Here, I’ll put the shortwave radio on high squelch to answer them. They won’t notice a different voice over the static.”
“This is Unit 359,” Cranston said, his radio providing static cover. “I’m having a difficult time hearing you, Homebase. There’s a lot of static as you can probably hear.”
“I understand, 359. I’ll speak slowly.”
“Hey Nance, that doesn’t sound like Duncan. I thought only he could communicate with us.”
“Who am I speaking to?” Douglas Merriman asked.
Nancy handed Bill a piece of paper with two names on it.
“This is Mark Jackson,” Cranston said.
“And I’m Douglas Merriman. I’ve been told to communicate directly with you. We need your report on the mission as of right now. Has the situation with the two astronauts been, uh, handled?”
Bill and Nancy looked at each other. “Why aren’t we speaking to Duncan?” Nancy whispered.
“The astronaut situation has been taken care of,” Bill Cranston said. “Jerry Laub and I are in command.”
“Say again, Mark, you’re breaking up.”
The radio static was doing its job.