“Now, facing lobbies like that, with institutional rivalries going back a half century, I sure as hell am not prepared to go into bat for any kind of shit-headed NASA insider stuff about how everything is fine and dandy, just another technical glitch we can get over with a little work. Did you know that the NASA management recommended just continuing with the Shuttle launch schedule in the immediate wake of Challenger? They had to be forced to take a hiatus while they figured out and fixed the problems. You will not find this Administrator making the same mistake.”
“I’ll tell you how we can minimize risk,” Benacerraf said hotly. “We just won’t fly. Jake, we’re flying experimental aircraft, here. You just can’t expect the public to see it this way. We’re the professionals. We understand the risks, and we accept them. That’s why there are no Challenger tombstones and memorials and plaques all over JSC. Jake, you have to have a little taste. You can’t keep looking back at some disaster, all the time. We have to move on. We’re looking at the future of humanity here, the expansion of the human race into—”
Hadamard waved her silent. “Let’s save the speeches, Paula. Besides, I think you are too smart to believe it. The truth is we are never going to move out into deep space. There’s nowhere to go. The Moon’s dead, Venus is an inferno, Mars is almost as dead as the Moon. And even if there was a worthwhile destination the journey would kill us. We’re not going anywhere, not in our lifetimes, probably not ever. It was always just a dream. People understand that, instinctively, in a way they never did in the 1960s, during Apollo. That’s why, I fear, they’re sick of spaceflight — Shuttle, the Station — and sick of the people who promote it.”
His words, though mildly expressed, seemed brutally hard. Benacerraf shivered, suddenly, despite the continuing warmth of the day. My God, she thought. He’s going to let it go. Is that what he’s brought me here to tell me?
Here in this nondescript wood, beside this slightly tacky memorial, she could be witnessing the death of the U.S. manned space program.
They turned and began to walk out of the wood, back towards the car.
“Why did you ask to see me, today? What do you want of me?”
“We’re going to be hit hard by Congress and the White House and the DoD over Columbia, Paula. Whatever I decide, I might not survive myself. And even if I do I’m going to have to shake up many levels of the management hierarchy, in all the centers. I’m trying to think ahead.
“I know I’m going to need someone to take over the Shuttle program. A fresh face. A management outsider, Paula, someone who’s untainted by all the NASA crap.”
She frowned. “You mean me?”
“You’ve the right qualifications, the right experience. I’ve watched how you’ve handled yourself in the fall-out from Columbia, and I’ve been impressed. And you have the right air of distance from the real insiders.”
She said, “My God. You’re asking me to oversee the dismantling of the Shuttle program.”
“Mothballing, Paula. That’s the language we’ll use. Look, it’s an important job.”
“To you?”
He grinned. “Hell, yes, to me. What did you think I meant?”
“But what about all the other programs? The stuff you started after Chinese-Sputnik panic, the RLV initiatives…”
“Frankly,” Hadamard said, “I don’t much care. If some damn Shuttle II ever flies, it will be long after I’m out of the hot seat. And if it ever does fly you know Maclachlan will just shut it down, when he takes the White House. All that matters to me is how to use up the Shuttle technology. That project, unlike RLV, will come to fruition during my term.”
Benacerraf got it. It could be that a judicious, sensitively handled wind-down of Shuttle would be the criterion on which Hadamard would be judged: on which the rest of his career might depend.
“Sure. So what about the components? What do we do with the three remaining orbiters?”
“You’ve heard some of the suggestions. You’ll hear more. The dreamers at Marshall want to respond to the Chinese, to go to the Moon. As ever. The USAF want nuclear space battle stations, or to practise sub-orbital bomb runs over Moscow. The Navy want to use the birds as target practice. And so on.”
“Do you have a preference?”
“Only that whatever you come up with fits the mood.” He smiled sadly. “Anyhow, JSC could use a new lawn ornament. The one we have now is getting a little rusty.”
“I understand,” she said sourly.
Lawn ornaments. Jesus.
She did understand. Hadamard wanted her to guide what was left of the Shuttle program through the current panic about the Chinese, all the way to the usual run-down and cancellations that would follow.
But, she thought, maybe it didn’t have to be like that.
If she took this job, she would move into a position where she could make things happen.
And there are, she thought, other possibilities than turning spaceships into lawn ornaments. Even if doing anything constructive would mean battling past the opposition of a lot of interests, not least the USAF. And even if it would all, it seemed, have to be a race against time, ensuring that whatever was set up was in place before Congressman Xavier Maclachlan became President and had a chance to shoot it in the head…
It was a hell of a challenge. But suddenly dreams like Rosenberg’s didn’t seem so remote. Suddenly she was in a position to move proposals like that out of the realms of thought experiments, even make them happen.
They emerged into the bright sunlight of the field beyond the wood. In the distance, the children continued to play, their calls rising to the sky.
For the first time since hitting the dirt at Edwards, she felt her pulse pick up a beat of excitement.
She said to Hadamard, “I’ll do the job.” But, she thought, maybe not the way you expect me to.
On Monday morning she moved into her new office at JSC. She called in her secretary and asked him to set up a series of meetings. George, a sombre but competent young man with his hair woven into tight plaits, took notes and began his work.
She needed a team. So she made a list for George: Marcus White, the stranded Moonwalker; Barbara Fahy, the woman who had tried to bring Columbia home; the young Station astronauts Mott and Libet; Bill Angel, the nearest thing to a competent pilot she knew. And Isaac Rosenberg, the dreamer, the crazy man who wanted to go to Titan.
George went off to set up meetings.
After a few minutes, she called him back in.
“Look, George, things are going to start popping around here,” she said. “I can’t tell you what it is right now, but I want you to keep a log of the people I talk to. And keep it in a secure directory.”
After all, she reflected, they could be making history here, in the next few weeks and months. Maybe historians of the future would care enough to understand how this decision had come about.
Or, she thought in her gloomier moments, not.
George seemed intrigued, but complied without questioning.
She got to work.
Rosenberg called Paula from Hobby Airport, ten miles south-east of downtown Houston. His plane, from Pasadena, had landed a half-hour late, after four in the afternoon.
“Get a cab to JSC,” she told him. “I’ll pick you up in my car at security.”