Shuttle flights were so routine the press didn't bother to cover them live anymore. There was always a token media presence, of course. The Challenger disaster guaranteed that. Everyone wanted tape if another in-flight catastrophe shook the world. So the national media duly sent a sprinkling of bored reporters each and every time an orbiter was launched.
This time it was the newest of the shuttle fleet, the Reliant. It was to be her maiden voyage. Task-deploy a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite, name and mission classified.
Usually the reporters showed up the day before launch and waited. Sometimes the wait stretched out over three or four days, and they grumbled. They always grumbled. They especially grumbled when the launch went off without a hitch. Sometimes they cursed and complained bitterly that the pictures were "always the same."
"What do you want?" the director once asked a CBS reporter. "Another Challenger?"
Without hesitation, the reporter said, "Hell, yes."
The director of operations walked away rather than clean the man's blue-bearded clock.
Today the Reliant stood on the gigantic crawler-transporter that moved her toward the launch pad, and the reporters were already here. In droves. The weather had been cold for Florida in late December. Maybe they had hopes of a catastrophic failure, the director thought angrily.
The media assembled in the director's office, which looked down over the most reinforced road in the world, with Launch Complex 39-A in the background. The crawler-transporter was rumbling along. It was a 2500-ton battleship gray converted surface coal-mining machine as big as a baseball diamond moving at a sedate three and a half miles per hour on four double-tracked tractor units. Each of the shoes that made up one of the massive treads was capable of exerting thirty-three tons of crushing force. Strapped to the gigantic external tank and flanked by the dual rocketlike boosters, the shuttle sat upright as if poised for launch, as it was borne to the launch pad.
It was an impressive sight, but since it wasn't spewing smoke and flame, the press showed no interest in it.
"Are you afraid for this mission?" asked one reporter.
"Why should I be?" the director shot back.
"If Martians did fry the BioBubble, wouldn't NASA be high on their target list?"
"There are no Martians, and there is no target list. Get off it."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I saw the Kking and Mariner probe pictures. It's a dead world."
"Then why is NASA talking about going there in thirty years?"
"It's not completely dead. There are probably lichen. Maybe some microbes or one-celled organisms."
"How do we know one-celled microbes aren't advanced enough to point death rays at Earth?" a seasoned science reporter asked.
"Because," the director of operations patiently explained, "a one-cell organism doesn't have a brain. It's a primitive lifeform." He swallowed his biting Like reporters, only smarter.
"We don't know what a one-celled Martian might be like. Maybe the cell is all brain."
"Yes, a giant brain," a reporter piped up from in back.
"If he was all brain," the director of operations said with ill-concealed impatience, "then he wouldn't have hands to point his death ray with, now would he?"
"Maybe some of his Martian comrades are just hands. Or feet. They gang up and make a whole person. Nassau'd be a sitting duck."
"It's NASA, not Nassau," he returned, correcting a sacrilegious mispronunciation reporters had been committing since the halcyon days of the Mercury Program. "And the program is not at risk. Take my word for it."
"You don't mind if we film the crawl?" one said.
"Be my guest."
Cameras were set up all around the giant transporter. They recorded every laborious inch and foot as the gigantic treads crept along. It typically took a full day to move a shuttle from the launch-assembly hangar to the pad. The media dutifully committed to tape every millisecond of the transfer.
Somewhere past midnight, after the launch director had gone home for the evening, the tireless cameras recorded the biggest disaster to strike NASA since the Challenger dropped into the Atlantic Ocean.
Floodlights bathed the gleaming white shuttle. The crawler crawled along the crawlerway with painful ponderousness, making a low mutter.
Without warning, night turned to day.
There came a white-hot flash, a thunderous baroom, and the space shuttle Reliant was instantly consumed, along with her wilting twin solid booster rockets. The big, empty external tank fed the blaze, its thin orange skin turned black in the instant before it collapsed utterly.
Shuttle, tank, boosters and transporter were fused into a single hot blob. Most of it melted down into molten metals arid sublimed rubber and other toxic fumes. Heat-resistant ceramic tiles rained down-literally rained. They came down as white-hot liquid precipitation that made smoking black teardrops on the ground.
The remote cameras were also consumed, so there was no footage.
Except for one still camera.
A National Enquirer photographer, denied admission to the facility on general principles, happened to be shooting from a vantage point in the marshes outside of NASA property.
He was taking shots of the Reliant silhouetted against the moonlit sky, clicking the shutter rapidly, not paying much attention, knowing that at least one good shot would emerge from the roll.
The image in the viewfinder was so small he missed seeing the important phenomenon in person. It was only after he developed the roll, looking for the "before" shot to go with the "after" image of the cataclysmic disaster he had captured, that the faintly glowing letters in the sky were discovered.
Because of what they spelled, all hell would break loose on both hemispheres.
Chapter 14
The President of the U.S. was awakened from a sound sleep by the urgent voice of his chief of staff.
"The new shuttle blew up, sir."
The President roused from the rosy haze of his dream life.
"Shuttle?"
"The Reliant. It went the same way as the BioBubble."
"Damn. Don't tell my wife. She'll find a way to blame me."
A stern kick to his ankle reminded the President of the U.S. that he happened to be in bed with his wife-contrary to his interrupted dream.
"Sorry. Didn't recognize the new hairdo," he muttered, throwing off the bed covers.
His chief of staff followed as the Chief Executive hurried from the room, tying a blue terry-cloth robe with the Presidential seal about his waist.
"You have to give a speech to reassure the nation," the chief of staff said anxiously.
"Have it written," the President snapped.
"We have to come up with a plausible explanation that won't trigger nationwide panic."
"I'll leave that up to you," the President said, stepping into the tiny White House elevator.
The chief of staff started to step aboard but a pudgy Presidential hand pushed him back.
"Meet me in the Oval Office. Ten minutes."
"Where are you going?"
"Upstairs."
"Oh."
The elevator took the President to the Lincoln Bedroom, where he got the tireless Smith on the line. Smith sounded sleepy for almost five seconds, then the lemonade started coming out in his voice.
"Smith, the space shuttle Reliant was just destroyed. It looks like whatever melted the BioBubble got it."
"I will look into it."
"I thought you were looking into it."
"I did. My people came up with nothing tangible. Although I am pursuing leads."
"How do I explain this to the American people? It looks like Martians are attacking the space program."
"The BioBubble was not part of the space program," Smith clarified.
"Try convincing the American public of that. With Dr. Pagan telling everyone space aliens are angry at us, they're sure not going to believe me. I don't have his credibility."