“Put me on a polygraph,” says Borman. “Hypnotize me.”
Stamford waves his hand dismissively. “That won’t be necessary. I wasn’t, incidentally, accusing you of lying. Merely of withholding the truth. There is a difference, Colonel, and an important one for men of integrity such as yourself. I mean you no disrespect.” He looks down at the report and says nothing more. People start breathing again.
Trick Stamford pours himself a glass of water and drinks it slowly, eyeballing people one by one around the table like a good little daddy’s boy. Borman wonders if there’s anything Trick wouldn’t do to win his father’s approval.
A man smoking a cigar opposite Borman slaps his hand on the table like a gavel calling the meeting to order. “The question then, as I see it,” he says, “is whether we allow Colonel Borman to take this flight, whether we try to send someone in his place… or whether we reject it out of hand.”
Borman notes Colonel Wade Fallon sitting alongside cigar man. Meaning they must both be military intelligence. He might have spoken up again at that moment, but Menzel gestures ever so slightly with his hand up to halt Borman in his tracks. Menzel says, “The invitation was extended to Colonel Borman. I believe his space flight experience is the thing that interests them. Specifically, his flight around the Moon. Meaning no other man can replace him.”
Cigar man says, “Many of us believe the lunar Anunnaki are not to be trusted.”
As opposed to the men sitting here, who Borman wouldn’t trust to put the trash out.
“There is a tendency among military strategists to mistrust the unknown,” says Menzel.
Colonel Fallon asks, “Colonel Borman, what’s your take? Do you trust them?”
Borman thinks about it. “I don’t know if stripping my memory is their idea of security, or if it’s a side effect of the ship itself. It could be either. Or both. I do remember Ningal told me their ship is alive. It’s self-aware. It has a consciousness. Make of that what you will. But I don’t believe she means me any harm. Three of us in this room witnessed the arrival of that ship. It must have been travelling at something approaching the speed of light and it stopped on a dime. An alien race with that sort of capability could wipe us out and be gone again before we knew what hit us. But this they have not done.”
Voices whisper urgently.
“And that,” cigar man replies, “is precisely what has us so worried.”
33
“Where do we get hold of a spacesuit? You think we just walk into the NASA shop and buy one off the rack?”
Menzel smiles. “That’s a good one, Frank. You’re a funny man.”
But Borman isn’t trying to be funny. They need an Apollo spacesuit like the one Buzz and Neil will wear to the Moon — and they need it quickly. Intention is one thing. Audacity is another. But certain practicalities can’t be avoided when faced with something as unforgiving as the vacuum of space, and Borman is beginning to see the devil at work in the detail.
“Actually,” says Menzel, “walking straight into NASA is what we’re going to do.”
Borman raises his eyebrows. “You don’t mean with that transporter device of yours?” Menzel had used just such a device, a product of alien technology, to take Borman from a cabin inside the USS Yorktown across the Pacific to an underground bunker. It happened in the blink of an eye, like walking through a door. He could no doubt do exactly the same thing to get them inside the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “Tell me we’re not going to steal a spacesuit.”
Menzel shakes his head. “We go in the normal way. It raises too many eyebrows if somebody happens to see us appearing out of thin air, so we just have to walk through the door like everyone else. You’re worried about your reputation. I understand that, believe me I do.”
It’s more than that. The president asked him to take charge of NASA, and here’s Menzel taking the law into his own hands and — even worse — treating the organization with a considerable amount of contempt by keeping them in the dark about their plans. He’d much prefer to be up front about all of this with Deke and Al Shepard. But Menzel and Bermuda prefer cloak and dagger. He suspects they’re using national security as a convenient smokescreen to protect their own power and autonomy, and there is nobody to challenge them on it. Borman’s a fighter, but he’s not about to throw himself under their tank treads in some futile defense of the moral high ground.
Hence their flight to Washington, where Menzel rented the Black Ford Fairlane now transporting them north along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to Goddard. The forty-minute drive seems to go slowly. Neither man has much to say, and Borman is still trying to work out what he’ll be saying to his wife about all of this when he sees her face to face in the morning. He hates the idea of keeping her in the dark. He’d be a whole lot happier just telling her the truth, but it wouldn’t be doing her any favors. She’d take it hard, and then worry herself sick about it. Better that he does the worrying for both of them.
Borman looks the other way as Menzel pulls up at the southern gate of the Goddard Space Flight Center. He opted for the G-man look — dark suit and hat with aviator sunglasses — hoping it would be enough of a disguise. Just the same, he keeps his head down as Menzel pulls rank on the guard manning the gate. Borman has been to Goddard many times before. Now more than ever, his face is immediately recognizable to everyone in the space program.
Menzel gets them inside with a minimum of fuss and steers them toward a non-descript building at the rear of the complex. A US Marine is the lone security guard at the front counter, stone-faced and immutable in his determination to carry out his duties as God and country intended. Menzel flashes his ID. There is a flicker of recognition on the man’s face that might almost be trepidation. He turns to Borman, who hands over a fake FBI badge, courtesy of Menzel. He makes no move to remove either his hat or his sunglasses. The Marine checks him out briefly, nods, and hands back the badge.
Menzel asks, “Is my package here?”
“Yes sir. Right this way.” He leads them to a small room, where a spacesuit is laid out on a work bench like a crude museum display.
Menzel glances at Borman. “I requisitioned Colonel Frank Borman’s entire flight suit, along with a few added extras like the helmet and the boots. You need to check it’s all here and in working order.”
Borman runs through a mental checklist, ticking off all the critical components from the inner layers to the outer. “The helmet — this isn’t mi… It doesn’t belong to Borman. Where’d you…?”
“We’re borrowing it from Alan Bean.”
“Does he know?”
Menzel seems amused, but doesn’t answer directly. “I figured it might come in handy.”
Borman says “He’s on the back-up crew for Apollo 9, what if he needs it?”
“In that unlikely event, he can borrow a helmet from one of the prime crew. But that mission’s in tip-top shape, prime crew are raring to go. Bean won’t be coming off the bench.”
“You’d better hope so,” says Borman. “How did you even get your hands on it?”
“I called in a favor or two,” says Menzel.
Persuading some poor NASA technician to commit an act of larceny seems like a whole lot more than a favor, but Borman isn’t going to object at this point. He picks up a pair of heavyset boots, knowing these too are not part of his space kit. More of Alan Bean’s kit? This time he decides not to ask. “It’s all here. And it’ll do the job.”
He’s almost ready for space, bar one crucial component. He still needs a PLSS: the backpack life support system designed for men to walk on the Moon. Because EVAs weren’t part of the mission on Apollo 8; there was never any need for Borman to have a PLSS of his own. He’d used them on the Gemini program, but their spacesuits had been totally redesigned since the Gemini days. The new-generation PLSS is slated for testing on Apollo 9, none of which is much help to him now.