And then Washington, D.C., two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Whitlow’s office. William J. Whitlow looked exactly as his voice had sounded over the phone. He was small, dapper, precise, stuffy. Middle aged, but old; he’d been born old, you could tell that by looking at him.
«When,» I asked him first, «shall I give notice that I’m leaving the rocket port?»
«The first of the year would be a convenient time, Mr. Andrews,» he said. He tented his fingers over the immaculate blotter on the desk in front of him and looked at me over them. «I could get you on the pay roll sooner, perhaps, but there is little if anything you can do until we’re ready to start construction. And putting you on the pay roll sooner would not benefit you financially. As the project is set up your job will pay no more than you are undoubtedly earning as Mr. Klockerman’s assistant meanwhile.»
«I don’t care about that,» I said. «All I want is to get going on that damn rocket.»
«We are setting up things as rapidly as we possibly can, I assure you. And once you start, there will be plenty of work for you to do. Perhaps—ah—this idea would appeal to you. I could put you on the pay roll as of, say, the first of November, and you could end your employment with the rocket port as of that date. But since there would be little or nothing you could do during those extra two months it would give you a chance to rest up, to take a vacation, as it were, on pay, before you would start—»
«I don’t want a rest or a vacation,» I cut in. «And I’m not in the slightest interested in getting on the pay roll before I can start building the rocket. Have you chosen a site yet?»
«No. I’ve been intending to ask your advice on it. Do you have any specific recommendation?»
«Not a specific one, but I’d suggest either New Mexico or Arizona. And the site should be within easy commuting distance of a fairly large city—Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso—a city large enough to absorb all the workers on the project and provide living quarters for them without special construction. If we build out in the middle of nowhere, or even near a small town, we’ll have to spend money building living quarters for a couple of hundred people, and that would take a big bite out of our budget. One that wasn’t figured in.»
He nodded. «That sounds sensible. Of the cities you mentioned, Albuquerque has one advantage over the others. It has the biggest stratojet port, with several scheduled flights a day to and from Washington. And I’ll have to be going back and forth frequently, so that would be a considerable advantage.»
«Good,» I said. «Then we should give Albuquerque first choice. Besides, the government owns a lot of land around there and we might find something we can use without buying—not that it’ll cost much if we have to buy. There’s plenty of land around there too poor even to grow sagebrush; you can buy it for almost nothing. The one thing we’ll want to watch out for is to find a good tract that’s near a main highway, so we won’t have to waste a lot of money on road building. Want me to look over some places on my way back? I’ll have all day tomorrow and I might find something. If I do we can go ahead and sew it up and quit worrying about a site.»
«If you would care to, certainly, Mr. Andrews. But—I’m afraid we haven’t a setup yet to reimburse you for whatever expenses you incur.»
«Don’t worry about that. It’s on my way back and stopping over won’t cost enough extra to bother about. Okay, I’ll do that and let you know if I find anything. And I’ll give notice at the port that I’m leaving as of the end of the year. Anything else we ought to talk about now?»
There wasn’t. All the talking we’d done could have been over the phone and much more cheaply. But I’d wanted to see Whitlow and size him up in person.
I wasn’t impressed with him, but I was pleased. He wasn’t the type of guy who’d get in my hair much once the thing was under way. I had a hunch he’d be spending most of his time in Washington, especially when he found out how damned hot it can get out on those badlands.
I flew to Albuquerque and got there by dusk. I checked in at a hotel that had hellie service and a landing field on the roof, and arranged to rent a hellie for the next day.
It was nearly noon when I found it. I knew at sight that it was perfect. I was flying south along the main highway, 85, about twenty-five miles south of Albuquerque, about five miles north of Belen.
It was to the left of the highway, not far back. An area flat as a lunar mare, about a quarter of a mile square, surrounded on all sides by low hills that would give it shelter from sand-laden winds.
A side road, two lane, already led back to it from the main highway and at the end of the road, the near side of the flat area, was a group of half a dozen buildings of assorted sizes. They looked deserted but not dilapidated. It would be almost too good to be true if that site was obtainable and the buildings already on it usable, even if they needed repairs and alterations.
I flew low and once around the perimeter. It was fenced, fenced with a high metal barrier just like a rocket launching area. But it hadn’t been that; there weren’t launching platforms.
The buildings looked like construction sheds, warehouses, one like a power station. I landed near the buildings and walked over. They weren’t in as good shape as they’d looked to be from the air, but they weren’t bad either; it would cost only a fraction as much to make them usable as it would cost to build new ones.
But what had this site been?
Suddenly it came back to me; I remembered. The G-Station!
Remember? If you’re old enough to remember the seventies you remember the plans for the G-Station and the wide publicity it got.
A super-luxury space station to be put in the seven hundred mile orbit by a cartel of the biggest of the gambling syndicates, a super-duper gambling club for millionaires who wouldn’t mind a thousand dollar ferry charge to get up to it for an evening’s recreation.
The gamblers had already thrown a few million bucks into the project, in acquiring this site and putting up these buildings for constructing the ferry rockets that would put the space station up in its orbit piece by piece and which would later be converted into passenger ferries to bring up the customers.
They’d just started the first rocket when the crackdown came, when the Harris-Fenlow bill broke the gambling syndicates, and broke a lot of the gamblers too. The project folded before a single rocket had been finished.
But God what a break for Project Jupiter! Why hadn’t I thought of this? Why hadn’t someone thought of it?
Here was at least a two million dollar saving for us in money, not to mention the saving in time in having our site leveled and fenced, our buildings already built and needing only repair.
And either the federal government or the State of New Mexico must own it, on tax foreclosure. It was a thousand to one that no one had kept up taxes on it for over twenty years.
What a break for Project Jupiter.
I spent a couple of hours walking around, looking around. The buildings were all boarded up tightly and nailed shut but I could get a good enough idea of them from the outside, and I got more and more excited at the idea.
I flew back to Albuquerque and parked my hellie on the roof without turning it in, went down to my room and started phoning. A helpful long distance operator got me Governor Romero at his home just north of Santa Fe at Tesuque. He said yes, the state owned the old G-station site. And yes, he’d give me a little time to talk to him about it if I flew up right away. Yes, there was a field adjacent to his home where a hellie could land; he gave me instructions how to find it.