Gibbs frowned and said quickly, "That's hardly necessary. It's just a text message."
For Tex, that clinched it. He looked Gibbs square in the eye. "Why are you in such a hurry to send the message?"
The SSA man did not condescend to answer him. Instead he turned to the Chief of Operations. "Phil, are you going to let Mission Control be directed by a senile old crank?"
"Certainly not," Mason answered. Gibbs had hit him in a sensitive spot.
Al Rollins spoke up. "Chief. The telemetry to the ERV will be received on an engineering channel. Technically speaking, procedures do require that it be sent to the simulator first." He winked at Tex.
Gibbs smiled, looking very reasonable. "Oh, come on! Since when do we mindlessly follow the book around here?"
That comment did not sit well with Mason. True, the Beagle crew had violated plenty of procedures; occasionally in the heat of action, Mission Control had taken a few shortcuts, too. But there was no reason to make a practice of it. "I see no need to bend the rules when we don't have to, Darrell. If the procedures dictate simulator testing prior to transmittal on this frequency, then that's what we'll do... even if it might seem pointless." He nodded to Rollins. "Send it to the sim."
Rollins punched buttons on his panel. "Re-routing to simulator... There, message sent."
Mason turned to the old-timer. "Tex, do you have the simulator up and running?"
"On the board." The screen above his desk displayed numerous systems diagrams: propulsion, life support, avionics, all glowing red, green, and blue.
To the manager's eye, it was incomprehensible. "What's happening?"
Tex ran his tongue over his teeth thoughtfully. "The clock was updated when the message was received. Other than that... not much."
Gibbs wore a knowing smile of vindication, clearly exasperated by the fuss. "Now can we go ahead and send?"
Once more, Mason signaled to proceed, but as Alicia reached for the Send switch, Rollins gently moved her hand aside. "Chief, this is a low-priority message, so if you don't mind, just as an exercise, I'd like to run it through the backup simulator at Lockheed Martin as well."
The suggestion surprised even Tex, but then he thought, Of course. The hacker could have screwed up our simulator too. Good thinking, Al.
Gibbs's reaction was less favorable. "That's ridiculous!" But before he could continue, his cell phone rang. He opened it. "Gibbs here."
The SSA Special Assistant was shocked when he heard Craig Holloway's voice on the other end. "Gibbs, I know you're on my side. Listen to me! Whatever you do, don't let them run that message through the Lockmart simulator. The fate of the Earth is at stake!"
Rattled, Gibbs instantly terminated the call. He looked around the room, thinking fast. How did Holloway know? What should I do? No choice, now I've got to pull it off.
After he folded his cell phone again, Rollins looked at him curiously. "What's so ridiculous about running a sim, Mr. Gibbs?"
Regaining his composure, the SSA Special Assistant faced Rollins with all the superiority he could muster. "It's ridiculous because this is a two-sentence text message that we all just wrote right here. It was idiotic to simulate it in the first place. Now you want to send it to the backup simulator, which we haven't used in three years, even for executables. You don't think that's absurd?"
"Message sent to Lockmart sim," Tex announced.
Gibbs exploded, drawing stares from the others in the room. "Hold it! No one gave you permission to do that!"
The open hostility alarmed Alicia. "Hey, hold the machismo, boys. It's just a sim."
"Yeah," Tex smiled broadly at Gibbs and gave an innocent shrug. "It's just a sim. What could you possibly be worried about?"
"Well, as long as we're running it, let's see what we've got," Mason said. "Al, put it on our board."
The operators eyed the displays; there was no change.
Gibbs looked around the room. "Okay, what a waste of time. We've run the backup sim. Now can we transmit?"
"Proceed," Mason said.
Alicia began to reach for the switch, but was again blocked by Rollins. "Alicia, wait," he said, staring at the simulator board intently.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I'm not sure." Rollins' voice was calm again. "I thought I saw a change in the power distribution in the life-support system, but if it was there, it was just a little shift, too small to matter."
Though edgy, the Chief of Operations was not so dismissive. Software was every mission manager's nightmare; the smallest error could mean disaster. Little shifts could grow in time. "Tex, try accelerating the time vector on the simulation."
Tex quickly typed a few keystrokes. "Okey-dokey. Taking her to warp one, an hour a minute." He stood up, wearing an expression that was a mixture of horror and vindication. "Now, this is mighty interesting.
Al Rollins leaned closer. "Wow!"
"What's interesting?" Mason asked nervously.
"It seems that our little letter of congratulations—you know, the simple two-sentence text message we all wrote right here—caused the ERV to replace the oxygen in its air with helium." The Texan grinned, showing impossibly bad teeth. "Funny thing about friendly letters, they can do the darnedest things."
Rollins shouted at Gibbs. "So it was you! You were the one who caused the malf in the Beagle's air system. You tried to kill our people!"
Mason looked accusingly at Gibbs, whose skin paled a bit.
"Phil, be realistic. How could I do anything? I never touch any controls around here."
For a moment, Mason was stumped. Then Tex interjected. "Al, do you have anything?"
Rollins typed a few commands and then peered at his computer screen. "Yes, it seems our system here in Mission Control has just had a visitor. Phone number 281-406-3647."
Alicia looked up. "That's Craig Holloway's number!"
Mason blew his stack. "Holloway! That nut has been doing this to us! He should have been in jail months ago." He turned to Gibbs. "And your people said there was no evidence against him!"
"Hey, Gibbs," Tex called, "that phone call you just got. Who was that from?"
Mason stepped closer to the SSA Special Assistant. "Let's see that phone, Darrell."
Gibbs backed away. "You can't have it. This phone uses White House encryption technology. None of you are authorized to carry it."
As Mason closed in on Gibbs, Rollins and Tex approached him from either side. From her desk, Alicia Castillo pulled out a pair of scissors, and snapping them in a nonchalant manner, started walking in the SSA man's direction. He quickly handed Mason the phone.
Mason punched the instant recall button, and the same incriminating number appeared. He turned the little screen so that Gibbs couldn't deny it.
"He called me. I never called him." That's right, Gibbs thought to himself. They don't have anything on me. Furthermore, in less than a week, the Administration would be a lame duck, and his own friends would be in power. I've nothing to fear from this pack of nerds. His courage restored, the SSA assistant faced the Mission Control boss with a superior smirk.
Mason looked him in the eye. "From the beginning wasn't it? The rover failure, even the pyro bolts for the tether separation? And the ERV propellant tanks' draining, and the burning of the computer card? You did those, too?"
As if enjoying the manager's hysteria, Gibbs just smirked.
His tie askew, the Chief of Operations fought down the urge to strangle the arrogant young man. "Why? You're not a Stetsonite."