The launchpad was a beehive of activity. Technicians were going over every square centimeter of the rocket and its launch gantry. The guard at the last checkpoint stepped out of his box and held up a hand for Ripley to stop. He came around to the driver’s side of the Toyota, a fake smile on his round face.
“Good evening, Major Ripley.”
“I need to take a look at something.” Ripley handed out his pass. He had the uneasy feeling that the guard had expected him.
The man took a perfunctory look at the pass, then handed it back. “Yes, of course. Let Mr. Kato know that you are on site, please.” Akio Kato was the launchpad director. He smiled again, stepped back and raised the barrier.
For a second Ripley was nonplussed. The guard should have checked with the launchpad director first. Ripley’s name wasn’t on the prelaunch directory. Technically he wasn’t supposed to be out here at this stage of the countdown except by permission. He’d been expecting to do some quick talking to get himself admitted.
He flashed the guard a smile, waved and then drove the last couple of hundred yards to the pad, where he parked on the west side of the loading ramp. The H2C rocket, bathed in hundreds of lights, towered 230 feet into the night sky, taller now in its final configuration than even the huge vehicle assembly building. The lower service towers and umbilical cord gantries were still in position, but the payload service tower had been swung on its central core out of the way to the right. Its primary purpose was to secure the payload to the upper stage of the rocket. Since that task was completed there was no further use for the tower, most of which was now in shadow.
Something was definitely wrong. This launch was very important to the Japanese — more so for some reason than Ripley could not figure out yet — so they were being superfastidious with their inspection routines and their security. Nothing was going to get past them. Nothing. And yet the guard had not raised so much as an eyebrow when he’d shown up at the gate.
Ripley was an engineer. Every effect had a cause, every action a reaction. He did not believe in spiritualism, touchy-feely group encounters, going with the flow and all that karma bullshit that some of his old college friends, now working in California, were into these days. Everything for him had a clear-cut reason, and therefore a clear-cut, understandable cause.
For some reason the Japanese no longer wanted Americans involved with this shot. During the last week they had made the Tiger team’s job almost impossible. The reason had to be a very good one, because the freeze-out was universal. Nobody was talking to them. Nobody.
He’d come to understand if not the actual reason, at least the effect, and so much as possible he and the others had managed to work around it. They had a job to do here, and they were doing it.
This morning, however, was completely out of character. If the Japanese were true to their recent form he would not have gotten past the first checkpoint, let alone this far. Even last week, before the dramatic shift in attitude, he would not have been allowed out here without a lot of questions being raised.
So what the hell was going on, he asked himself. If their console had been bugged and his conversation with Maggie recorded, they wouldn’t have let him out of the building. At least he didn’t think they would, because there’d be no reason for it. If they were hiding something out here, they’d want to keep it from him. If they weren’t hiding something, they’d still keep him away from the launchpad because he had no reason to be out here now. It bothered his sense of orderliness. He didn’t like unexplained mysteries, and this one was starting to piss him off.
He put on his hard hat and headed over to the payload gantry. A dozen other vehicles were parked around the pad, and twenty or thirty technicians were busy at work. At this stage of the countdown they were concentrating on mechanical glitches: loose screws or fasteners, missing access plates, disconnected launch cables or hoses, rust, metal fatigue — any of hundreds of little problems that could have a serious effect on the mission. The inspections would not end until the rocket lifted off the pad. It was the same at the Cape.
No one paid any attention to him. He was expecting someone to come after him, or at least shout for him to stop or ask him what the hell he was doing here. Kato ran a tight crew, nothing escaped his attention. But nobody did.
At the base of the tower, Ripley glanced over his shoulder; still nobody was coming after him. It was incredible. He ducked inside the big service elevator, half expecting to see that the power was down and he would have to climb the stairs to the white house. But the buttons were lit. For just a moment he had the feeling that he was being set up, being led by the nose exactly where they wanted him to go. But that made no sense either.
He closed the gate and pressed the button for the top level. On the way up he looked across at the activity on the other tower and umbilical gantry. He could see the technicians because they were bathed in light, but they could not see him because the payload tower was in darkness. Which was another bothersome thing. The power was on, but there were no lights other than the red warning lights on top.
He tried to work out all the possibilities in his mind, to find an innocent, logical explanation. But no matter how he looked at the information he had available, he came back to the satellite in the rocket. Whatever he’d seen wasn’t covered with gold foil. He knew that much. So why hadn’t he brought it up with Kimura, he asked himself. Kimura would have told him something, and he could have made his decision then and there on the spot. He had held back, he decided, because of everything else that had happened in the past seven days. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what it was, but he damned well was going to find out tonight, or he’d stop the launch clock, and the hell with the consequences if he was wrong.
At the top, the tower swayed a little in the light sea breeze. The red warning lights above in the scaffolding flashed pink against the stark white walls of the empty clean room, the tall door to which was clipped in the open position.
He stepped off the elevator and stood a few moments in the flashing red lights, still debating with himself. He was on a wide catwalk across from the clean room which capped the tower’s enclosed central core. The room was empty, except for test equipment mounted on the walls, and the low-slung titanium dolly on which the satellite had been moved. No one was up here with him, and yet he had the feeling that he wasn’t alone.
Four closed-circuit television cameras were mounted overhead on the scaffolding, but the lights were off indicating that the circuits were not in use. The nearest technicians were seventy-five or eighty feet away on the service tower. He looked over the rail, but no one had come to check out his car or to find out why the elevator wasn’t at the ground level. Kato would notice sooner or later, so he didn’t have a lot of time to screw around. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him.
“Nerves,” he muttered, hesitating a moment longer, then he stepped across the catwalk and went into the white house.
The flashing red lights acted like strobes; they were disconcerting. Ripley went back out, unclipped the dust-proof door and pulled it closed. Lights came on automatically, and the test equipment powered up.
He stood, head cocked, listening for any sounds, for an intruder alarm to pop off or for someone to call on the phone to demand what the hell he was doing up here.
He stepped over the dolly and moved cautiously to the center of the circular room. White plastic padding covered the walls, and the floor was covered with spotless white tiles.