Rhonda has spent the last two days in Wisconsin, vetting a prospective contractor who reached the final round to build the Orion’s solid rocket launch system. As the astronaut member of the selection committee her job is to interview the company’s management, meet the workforce, inspect the facilities then write a report. She’s glad it’s over. The last forty-eight hours have been arduous, to say the least, for the blonde thirty-eight-year-old with the ski-jump nose. She’s looking forward to getting to LA, attending the movie’s announcement then spending a couple of days decompressing at the Beverly Wilshire with Judd. She wants to clear her head before getting back to JSC and tackling that Orion simulator. She hasn’t mastered the damn thing yet and it’s starting to piss her off. She knows, as does everyone else involved with preparations for the Mars missions, that she is the frontrunner for FOM, but if she doesn’t get a handle on the sim soon that opportunity will slip away.
For the life of her, she doesn’t understand why she can’t crack it. In the past she has excelled at this type of training. The shuttle simulator took her one day to figure out. One day! So why is she dropping the ball on this? It’s like she’s so used to flying the shuttle that she can’t adapt to Orion. Granted, the two are nothing alike, but still, she should be able to do it, she’s a member of the Atlantis 4, for Chrissake. Whatever it is, whatever is missing, she needs to find it — and fast.
As she reaches the top of the stairs the man in front of her stops abruptly and she bumps into him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What? Oh, sorry. Nothing.’
‘Get a move on, will you?’
Rhonda watches the man enter the aircraft and rolls her eyes. The reason the last two days have been so arduous is because that man, good old Severson Burke, who is also a member of the selection committee, accompanied her on this trip. Good Lord he’s a tool. Yes, he can be charming in a Downey Jr-ish sort of way, but mainly he’s a selfish son of a bitch who thinks of no one but himself. He’s also the reason they’re the last to board the aircraft. He took so long in the bathroom they almost missed the final boarding call.
Severson would happily miss the flight and drive to Los Angeles if he could. Unfortunately that’d mean he’d also miss the movie’s announcement and he can’t have that, no matter how much he hates flying, or being in an aircraft, or being near machines designed to lift him off the ground. In fact, they don’t even have to be machines. As far as he’s concerned ladders are not be trusted. Christ, sitting on a bar stool can cause his collar to feel tight and a prickly sweat to break out across the back of his neck, which is exactly what’s happening now. Yep, his fear of heights (and flying and aircraft) is as intense as when it first afflicted him during his one and only shuttle flight four years ago. He can’t believe it. He’s forty-six and afraid of heights. Forty-six!
How embarrassing.
He grits his teeth and wills himself into the 737’s cabin. The tiny, single-aisle jet usually seats about one hundred and fifty, but there’s fewer than half that number on board today’s flight. There’s an audible gasp from the passengers as they recognise two members of the Atlantis 4, then a rousing round of applause. Severson laps it up, Rhonda not so much, then the starstruck flight attendant directs them to their seats halfway along the cabin.
Rhonda takes the window seat and settles in. The jet starts to taxi almost immediately. After a moment Severson leans over and whispers to her, slightly annoyed: ‘I thought we were flying business.’
‘There is no business. The whole plane is coach.’
‘Oh. Right. These seats are very narrow.’
She looks at him with an expression of mock horror. ‘Oh no, Severson’s seat isn’t big enough! Somebody call the cops! How awful! And just when you need to rest — it must have been so exhausting lying around the hotel pool drinking margaritas for the last two days.’
He turns to her, eyes narrowed. ‘And what, exactly, do you mean by that?’
She taps an imaginary microphone. ‘Hello? Is this thing on? What I mean is that you are a lazy prick who did sweet fuck-all while we were in Wisconsin — which meant I had to do everything.’
‘I went in to the head office.’
‘Once. And ponced about for ten minutes, signed a couple of autographs, then left to see a movie with one of the receptionists.’
‘There was a Woody Allen retrospective on and she’d never seen Annie Hall.’
Rhonda fastens him with a laser stare and shakes her head. ‘Wow, it’s like they took all the things that are annoying and put them in one person.’ She turns, pulls on her headphones and looks out the window.
Severson doesn’t attempt to engage her. She’s giving him the silent treatment which, if everything goes well, will last until they reach LA. Gee, she really does need to loosen up, though, she’s so damn serious all the time. And she doesn’t seem to realise these committees are for show. The decision on who wins the contract will happen at a much higher pay scale than theirs, so the trip is just a chance to junket it up and party-hearty for a few days.
The 737 swings onto the runway as the turbofans run up. They bite the air and jolt the Boeing down the runway. Severson pulls on his eye mask and clamps on his noise-cancelling headphones. He found that if he eliminated as much stimuli as possible it could almost make a plane trip bearable. Almost. That’s why he took so long in the bathroom before this flight. He’d misplaced his last Valium and had to empty out his carry-on to find the little bastard, which had somehow lodged itself in the headphone port of his iPad.
Unfortunately the pill doesn’t seem to be working yet.
The 737 gathers speed as it rushes down the runway. His collar feels even tighter than before; the hot prickly sweat on his neck back with a vengeance. As an added bonus, his stomach feels über-queasy. He takes a deep breath, grasps the side of his seat and squeezes. Ah, that’s better. It’s soft and comforting and, now he thinks about it, much too soft—
He pushes up his eye mask and glances down. He’s squeezing Rhonda’s thigh. She fixes him with a dark stare.
Severson instantly removes his hand as the 737’s nose tilts up and the jet rips into the iron-grey sky.
7
Crouched on a helipad in the middle of the five-hectare compound, the Tyrannosaur is hidden on all sides by a series of grey-rendered, two-storey buildings. When Bunsen built this place three years ago his priority, apart from making it earthquake-proof, was to locate it in a section of Santa Monica near the airport with no restrictions on helicopter use. He didn’t want neighbours complaining about the Tyrannosaur. After all, it’s the loudest helicopter to ever fly.
Bunsen and Enrico work at the centre of the Air-Crane. A large V-shaped tank rests in a cradle as they bolt it to the underside of the helicopter’s spindly airframe. The tank is specifically designed so the chopper can haul and drop large quantities of water on fires. It won’t be used to drop water today.
Kilroy Jones, the aging, ponytailed head of security, cuts across the helipad towards them, a frown on his crinkle-cut face. Bunsen looks up as he approaches. ‘What’s that expression? Everything okay?’