They continued to move steadily through the crowded sky at one g.
"Micro, this is Skyport." The voice crackled in his earphones. "Do you read?"
"We copy, Skyport. We are still here."
"What is your status?"
Tony relayed what he knew, fuel usage, damage report, passenger list. "No casualties."
"Micro, we're missing one name."
"Jack Chandler. He didn't make it."
"What happened?"
"Heart attack, we think. Died just before they were scheduled to come on board. His body was left at Moonbase."
The response broke up.
"Say again, Skyport. Do you read?" There was only interference.
Something hit the blister again and was gone too quickly to be seen. It left a crooked star, not unlike the type that a flying rock might put in a windshield.
"We okay?" asked Tony.
The danger was that the blister had to withstand 14.7 pounds per square inch of air pressure. The three decks, cargo, passenger, and flight, were sealed off from each other. So if the worst happened, and the canopy blew out, at least the Micro would only lose its pilots.
Only the pilots.
Saber touched the star with her index finger. She pushed gently at it and traced the individual lines. "I think it's okay," she said. Micro Cargo Deck. 10:41 P.M.
Like Saber, Bigfoot was still inside his pressure suit. As a precaution, he'd put his helmet back on, but he was having problems with vertigo and got it off again just before throwing up. He'd secured himself to the ladder with his belt; and although the accelerated liftoff wasn't nearly as stressful as it would have been leaving Earth, it was nevertheless not comfortable, and left him with bruised ribs and an aching shoulder that he suspected had been dislocated.
C deck, the cargo deck, was a confined space: it possessed no viewports, and it rocked and fell and twisted until his head spun violently. He wished he'd moved more quickly and got to the passenger cabin.
But it could have been worse: since they were accelerating, the vomit had gone to the deck and wasn't floating around. He grinned and felt a little better. SSTO Rome Passenger Cabin, 145,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:42 P.M.
Rick controlled fear by the simple act of cutting off the cause. His technique in this case consisted of lowering his blind and concentrating on other issues. Specifically, on how well things had gone so far. The vice president had behaved well, and if they all came through it, there would be an appropriate reward. For Rick, that reward would consist not simply in winning the White House in the fall, but in running a campaign for a genuine hero. Charlie Haskell, a long shot in his own party a week ago, was going to be unbeatable.
Haskell was off the Moon, riding a bus, for God's sake, and a little one at that. With any kind of luck, communications would be restored, Morley would continue to give Charlie a ton of play, and there'd be brass bands to greet the vice president when he got home.
Rick's juices flowed at the prospect of writing appropriately modest remarks to be delivered to the news services. The phrases were already running through his head: We were fortunate to be flying with What's-his-name, who's one hell of a pilot or we'd all be dead. And, We've taken a heavy loss at Moonbase, there's no doubt of that. But no one's been killed, and that's what counts. Or, Yes, we've lost some people, and I'd like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence for these brave heroes who dared to reach for the future… Charlie was good at this kind of stuff, had a natural flair for it. Probably because he believed it. It was the secret to his success. He was naive, everybody knew it, even he knew it, but it didn't matter. It was all part of his charm. It was what the voters liked.
For Rick, it was a clear demonstration of what the game was really about. The media often maintained that campaigns weren't substantive. But the media didn't understand about electioneering. When they complained that issues were seldom discussed, that the debate got too personal, that in the end a fog of obfuscation was thrown over everything, they were missing the point: An election is an art form. Its purpose is not to illuminate the issues of the day, but to box in an opponent. To watch him try to wriggle free of charges and innuendo. It was Charlie's special gift that he could perform the surgery in a friendly, inoffensive, down-home manner. People liked that. They didn't like vindictive politicians, or hard chargers.
Something smashed into the spacecraft, and the cabin tilted, first one way and then another. There were startled cries, and Rick white-knuckled the arms of his chair. But the plane straightened out and the pilot came on the speaker: "Nothing to worry about, folks. Just a piece of junk bouncing off the hull. There'll probably be more, but we're doing fine."
Rick forced himself to concentrate on the vice president's arrival at Reagan. He pictured the scene, Charlie coming out of the plane, waving to the crowd, moving to a platform for his remarks.
Politics was a struggle for power, in its purest and simplest terms. If the voters were lucky, the winner would go on to improve their lot, because he would need their votes next time. Or because he enjoyed being popular. But issues were irrelevant. Always had been, probably. Once the age of mass communications arrived, presidents became entertainers, celebrities, if they were smart. FDR used his fireside chats; Kennedy had allowed spontaneous questions at press conferences, relying on wit and charm. Reagan knew from the films exactly how a president should behave, and he had exactly enough acting talent to bring it off. In that sense, he was the first modern president.
It had taken a while for the country to get the point. But it had. Neither Lincoln nor Washington would have had a chance of election during the age of mass communications. And maybe that was just as well. Rick knew that neither would have taken his advice. SSTO Arlington Fight Deck, 23,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:43 P.M.
George would have traded his soul for his old A-77 Blackjack. The space plane simply hauled too much mass, was too sluggish and too big a target.
He'd also discovered a disconcerting illusion. As an essentially earthbound pilot, he was accustomed to a sense of motion in flight: clouds whispering past, Skyport drawing near, Reagan falling away. Out here the environment, even the comet, had been frozen. Nothing ever moved.
Except for the explosive front that had ripped through and tried to tear the plane out of his hands. The tail assembly had been demolished and a rock had punched through one of the overhead compartments. He knew there was hull damage, but not how much. And there was still stuff coming at him. The pieces tended to be bigger than the dust storms and flying rocks in the first wave, but they weren't moving quite as fast now, so he had a better chance of getting out of their way.
He got on the circuit and told his passengers he knew the ride had been rough, but he assured them they would be all right. Micro Passenger Cabin. 10:44 P.M.
The cabin was quiet. Morley's earlier monosyllabic burble had irritated Charlie, but now he missed it. It had been their last link with the mundane. With the lights gone and the surreal outside world trying to break through the windows, the mundane would have looked pretty good.
Fear was endemic. The vehicle continued to lurch wildly, and the sounds of stress in the bulkheads were all too threatening. Charlie sensed that no one expected to come out of this alive, and there was almost a wish that it should end. Get it over with.
But gradually the motions of the Micro became less severe, and there were extended stretches of relatively unagitated flight.