He is, needless to say, the paying passenger, and in the case of space flight that means paying through the nose. His ticket was $2.2 million, but Gwendy knows there was another price, as well. Mega-billions translates into political clout, and as it gears up for a manned Mars mission, TetCorp needs all the political allies it can get. She just hopes Winston survives the trip and gets a chance to use his influence. He’s overweight and his blood pressure at last check was borderline. Others in the Eagle crew may not know that, but Gwendy does. She has a dossier on him. Does he know she knows? It wouldn’t surprise Gwendy in the least.
“To call this the trip of a lifetime would be an understatement,” he says. He’s speaking loudly enough for the others to turn around and look. Operation Commander Kathy Lundgren gives Gwendy a wink, and a small smile touches the corners of her mouth. Gwendy doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know what that means: Better you than me, sister.
As the slow-moving elevator passes the lower T in TET, Winston gets down to business. Not for the first time, either. “You’re not here just to send back rah-rah dispatches to your adoring fans, or to look down at the big blue marble and see how the fires in the Amazon are affecting wind currents in Asia.” He looks meaningfully down at the white box with its CLASSIFIED stamp.
“Don’t sell me short, Gareth. I took meteorology classes in college and boned up all last winter,” Gwendy says, ignoring both the comment and the implied question. Not that he’s afraid to ask outright; he already has, several times, both during their four weeks of pre-flight training and their twelve days of quarantine. “It turns out that Bob Dylan was wrong.”
Winston’s broad brow creases. “Not sure I’m following you, Senator.”
“You actually do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The fires in the Amazon and those in Australia are making fundamental changes in Earth’s weather patterns. Some of those changes are bad, but some may actually be working in the environment’s favor, strange as that seems. They could put a damper on global warming.”
“Never believed in all that stuff myself. Overblown at best, nonexistent at worst.”
Now they are passing the E. Get me away from this guy, Gwendy thinks … then realizes that if she didn’t want to be in close quarters with a guy like Gareth Winston, she should have avoided this trip altogether.
Only she couldn’t.
She looks up at him, maintaining what she thinks of as the Patsy Follett Smile. “Antarctica is melting like a Popsicle in the sun and you don’t think global warming is real?”
But Winston won’t be led away from what interests him. He may be an overweight blowhard, but he didn’t make all those mega-billions by being stupid. Or distractable. “I would give a great deal to know what’s in your little white box, Senator, and I have a great deal to give, as I’m sure you know.”
“Ooo, that sounds suspiciously like a bribe.”
“Not at all, just a figure of speech. And by the way, since we’re going to be space-mates very shortly, can I call you Gwendy?”
She maintains the brilliant smile, although it’s starting to hurt her face. “By all means. As for the contents of this …” She lifts the box. “Telling you would get us both in very big trouble, the kind that lands you in a federal facility, and it’s really not worth it. You’d be disappointed, and I’d hate to let down the fourth richest man in the world.”
“Third richest,” he says, and gives her a smile that equals Gwendy’s in brilliance. He waggles a gloved finger at her. “I won’t give up, you know. I can be very persistent. And no one is going to put me in prison, dear.” Oh my, Gwendy thinks. We’ve progressed from Senator to Gwendy to dear in the course of one elevator ride. Of course, it’s a very slow elevator. “The economy would collapse.”
To this she makes no reply, but she’s thinking that if the box inside the box—the button box—fell into the wrong hands, everything would collapse.
The sun might even gain a new asteroid belt between Mars and Venus.
4
AT THE TOP OF the gantry there’s a large white room where the space travelers stand, arms raised and doing slow pirouettes, as a disinfecting spray that smells suspiciously like bleach wafts over them. It’s their last cleansing.
Not long ago there was another room in here, a small one, with a sign on the door reading WELCOME TO THE LAST TOILET ON EARTH, but Eagle Heavy is a luxury liner equipped with its own bathroom. Which, like the three cabins, is actually little more than a capsule. One of the private cabins is Gareth Winston’s. Gwendy reckons he deserves it; he paid enough for it. The second is Gwendy’s. Under other circumstances she might have protested this special treatment, U.S. Senator or not, but considering her main reason for being on this trip, she agreed. Mission Control Director Eileen Braddock suggested that the six members of the crew without flight responsibilities (Ops Commander Kathy Lundgren and Second Ops Sam Drinkwater) draw straws for the remaining cabin, but the crew voted unanimously to give it to Adesh Patel, the entomologist. His live specimens have already been loaded. Adesh will sleep in a cramped bunk surrounded by bugs and spiders. Including (oh, ag, Gwendy thinks) a tarantula named Olivia and a scorpion named Boris.
The lavatory belongs to all, and no one is any happier about that than their mission commander. “No more diapers,” Kathy Lundgren told Gwendy during quarantine. “That, my dear Senator, is what I call one giant leap for mankind. Not to mention womankind.”
“Ingress,” the loudspeakers on Mission Control boom. “T minutes two hours and fifteen minutes. Green across the board.”
Kathy Lundgren and Second Ops Sam Drinkwater face the other members of the crew. Kathy, her auburn hair sparkling with tiny jewels of disinfectant mist, addresses all eight, but it seems to Gwendy that she pays special attention to the Senator and the billionaire.
“Before we begin our final prep, I’ll summarize our mission’s timeline. You all know it, but I am required by TetCorp to do this once more prior to entry. We will achieve earth orbit in eight minutes and twenty seconds. We will circle the earth for two days, making either 32 or 33 complete circumnavigations, the orbits varying slightly to create a Christmas bow shape. Sam and I will be charting space junk for disposal on a later mission. Senator Peterson—Gwendy—will begin her weather monitoring activities. Adesh will no doubt be playing with his bugs.”
General laughter at this. David Graves, the mission’s statistician and IT specialist, says, “And if any of them get free, out the hatch they go, Adesh. Along with you.” This provokes more laughter. To Gwendy they sound pretty loosey-goosey. She hopes she sounds that way herself.
“On Day Three, we’ll dock with Many Flags, which just now is pretty much deserted except for a Chinese enclave—”
“Spooky,” Winston says, and makes an ooo-OOOO sound.
Kathy gives him a flat look and continues. “The Chinese keep to themselves in Spoke 9. We’re in Spokes 1, 2, and 3. Spokes 4 to 8 are currently not occupied. If you see the Chinese at all, it will be while they’re running the outer ring. They do a lot of that. You’ll have plenty of room to spread. We’re going to be up there for an additional 19 days, and room to spread is an incredible luxury. Especially after 48 hours in Eagle Heavy.